'My associates,' Fournier said quietly.
Terror is the most debilitating emotion of all, and the sight of the three drooling, soulless men standing in front of me and staring into eternity thoroughly incapacitated me. My chest was constricted so tightly that I was having trouble catching a breath, and my back felt as if someone had pressed a slab of ice against it. If my hands had not been wrapped tightly around my knees, I knew they would be trembling. What had slouched into the room was apparently what Fournier had in mind for me, destroying my mind and will instead of carving out my heart, maybe to have me pad off and get his newspaper and slippers each morning. I preferred death the old-fashioned way, even if I had to earn it, but mostly I preferred me the way I was. My only chance of staying that way lay first in relaxing, as improbable as that goal seemed under the circumstances. Fournier apparently knew what I was thinking, sensed I wasn't too thrilled with developments, for he was now standing erect in the doorway, aiming his gun with both hands at my right kneecap. My first, panic-stricken reaction was to leap to my feet and start whaling away at the men in the gray suits, but that plan was contraindicated; I wouldn't be whaling, or standing, very long after a bullet had shattered my kneecap. A more practical plan of attack-or escape-was needed. Such a scheme was not immediately springing to mind, but maybe, just maybe, there might come a moment when a window of opportunity for survival might open for a single split second. If such a window did open, and if I was to be able to take advantage, I would need all my strength, reflexes, and quickness at peak operating efficiency, and at the moment I felt about as limber as a boulder.
It took all of my will to force myself to breathe regularly and relax my muscles. Fiercely wrestling the terror back into a crawlspace in my mind where I could ignore it for a few moments, I slowly crossed my arms over my chest, crossed my right leg over my left, threw back my head and laughed. Somewhat to my surprise, the sound really did resemble a laugh instead of a shriek. I let it trail off into a low chuckle, then shook my head and said, 'Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle. There really is something to this zombie business after all.'
Fournier, who had moved a few feet into the room so as to get a better aim at my knee with his gun, looked uncertain. He blinked a few times as he stared into my face, then grunted softly. 'You've been described as having great courage, Frederickson. I see that the reports are accurate. I salute you.'
Imagining I was just an actor in an ancient movie with my four ghoulish costars, I read the next line in my improvised script in a steely voice. 'Stick your reports and your salute up your ass, Professor. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go, and it looks like I'm outta here. I know when it's over, and I sure as hell don't intend to give you any more satisfaction than you already have. Besides, I think this is kind of a hoot. I assume you know I've been shot, frozen, electrocuted, beaten, stabbed, tortured to the point of death, what have you. Run-of-the-mill stuff. Hey, but being turned into a zombie, or having my heart cut out in a voodoo ceremony? Now
Fournier's response was to speak to the men again in Creole. The man with the matching face and suit directly in front of me reached into a pocket and withdrew a small glass vial with a cork stopper. The vial was half filled with a fluffy, yellowish powder flecked with dark green spots that could have been tiny seeds.
'This won't hurt you, Frederickson,' the white-haired man said as his helper removed the cork from the vial and started shuffling toward me. I could hear the barely suppressed excitement in his voice. 'This is just a little something to make you more … compliant. It will be much easier if you cooperate. Just breathe it in deeply, as if you were taking snuff or cocaine.'
Compliant, indeed. I suspected that the main ingredient in the 'little something' he wanted me to snuffle was what was reported to be tetradioxin, dried poison from the glands of the puffer fish, and all it would do to me was destroy my mind and put one hell of a dent in my nervous system. I laughed again, then threw back my head, stretched out my arms, and made loud snorting noises. 'All
The moment, a millisecond, arrived. As the man with the vial leaned over to put it under my nose, he came into the line of fire between Fournier and me. I snapped my crossed right leg up, burying the toe of my sneaker into the gray-faced man's groin. Zombies apparently retained a certain amount of sensitivity in their testicles, because this one let out a most un-zombielike yowl, grabbed at his crotch with his free hand, and began to sag to the floor. I grabbed the open vial from his other hand and hurled it across the room at the startled professor. He had been about to fire at me, but his eyes went wide at the sight of the vial spewing powder and streaking toward his head, and he quickly ducked away, covering his mouth and nose with his free hand.
Since Fournier was obviously so concerned about not breathing in any of the powder that hung in the air like tinted dust motes, I took it to mean I should be likewise concerned. I sucked in a deep breath and held it. However, I wasn't going to be able to stay in a breath-holding mode for very long at all, considering how my heart was racing, and I had major distractions. The man I had kicked was still out of commission, but from somewhere inside their suits his two colleagues had produced blades that were as big as Bowie knives and curved like scimitars. I ducked as one slashed at my head, and came up and jabbed the stiffened fingers of my right hand into his solar plexus. Two down. I dodged the knife thrust of the third man and, still holding my breath but feeling as if my lungs were about to burst, leapfrogged over a stack of books and headed for the window. I paused just long enough to duck down behind the computer station, eject the diskette I had inserted, and put it between my teeth. Then I dove through the glass, covering my face with both forearms. I didn't hear the cough of the silenced gun behind me, but I did hear the bullets whack into the window frame and glass flying around me, smashing the shards of the pane into even smaller bits.
Circus time. The momentum of my dive carried me clear over the fire escape, but as I sailed through the air I reached out at the last moment as I twisted around and caught the top of the steel railing with my right hand, my breath exploding through my nose and from between my clenched teeth. I swung back and banged hard into the fire escape, which I immediately let go of when Fournier, holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, suddenly appeared at the window above me and pointed his Glock at my head. I plummeted as bullets ricocheted off steel and whined over my head, but managed to break my fall by grabbing the railing at the second-floor landing, and then at the first. I landed hard on the ground, absorbing the shock by collapsing my legs and rolling over twice. I came up running. Grabbing the diskette from between my teeth and gasping hoarsely for breath, I sprinted across the campus in the direction of Washington Square Park.
By the time I found a pay phone that worked I could hear the distant wail of sirens approaching from three directions. I knew where the fire engines were heading-Faul Hall, where the office of Dr. Guy Fournier was undoubtedly ablaze, destroying all his papers, books, and magazines, along with the photographs and any other little treasures that might be hidden there. I called 911 to report on four maniacs, three in gray suits who looked like zombies and the other wearing a pajama top, who were somewhere on the streets of the Village, and I urgently requested that they be picked up and held for questioning. I didn't think it was going to do much good, for Fournier and his zombies were probably already long gone in the van or station wagon that had brought the three members of the voodoo death squad to the campus, but I figured it was worth a try. When I hung up the receiver, I noticed that the pitted black plastic was covered with blood.
I stepped out of the phone booth into the faint, grayish light of the breaking dawn and looked down at my hands and front. I was bleeding from a dozen places, mostly my hands and arms, where the flying shards of glass had nicked me, but there were no bullet holes, and all of the cuts looked to be superficial, if messy. What concerned me more than the cuts was the residue of yellow powder that clung to my clothes and skin like sticky bee pollen. Under the circumstances, I decided that it was just as well I was bleeding, for I didn't want any of the 'zombie dust,' as I was beginning to think of it, to get into the cuts, and I certainly hoped I hadn't breathed in any of it. I needed a good vacuuming, and I really didn't care to find out how much of the stuff it took, either inhaled or absorbed through an open wound, to turn me into something gray-faced, shuffling, and drooling.
I removed two tiny slivers of glass from my forearm as I considered my next move. I needed to get washed off and patched up. Then what I wanted to do more than anything else was to get after Fournier and his colleagues, without interference or anybody looking over my shoulder. However, I knew I no longer had the luxury of independent action. A very deadly game with enormous consequences was indeed afoot, and I had no idea when the opponents were going to push their pawns out over the board-in two months, a week, a day, ten minutes. Now that they knew I was privy to their strategy, they might radically advance their time schedule. I was going to have to confer with the powers that be, and I was going to have to do it immediately- even before going home. I figured I had used up a good decade's worth of luck in the past hour or so, and I might not have any left. If I even indulged in the simple luxury of going home to get cleaned up, I ran the risk of getting hit by a truck, or squashed by a falling
