“I bet he never got booked for many children’s parties,” I mumble, feeling sick and confused at the thought of having had this monster trailing me for all those years.
Mr. Dowling turns his gaze on me, his eyes dancing more feverishly than usual in their sockets. He doesn’t make any sounds, but he must be communicating telepathically with the mutant, because Kinslow starts supplying words for him again.
“He’s sorry he couldn’t take you from your school ahead of the attack. He sent me along to keep an eye on you, but I was under orders not to rescue you or show favoritism. You had to come here as an equal, of your own free will. He wasn’t sure you’d revitalize, or even if you’d survive at all, but he had faith. He says that ultimately we must all cling to belief and hope for the best.”
“That day in the Imperial War Museum,” I mutter, thinking back. “You were there to test me, weren’t you? It wasn’t the baby you were after. You came to check on me, to see what I’d do in a situation like that.”
Kinslow nods. “We knew the day of reckoning was almost upon us. Mr. Dowling wanted to find out what you were made of, if you had what it would take to pull through. He was worried about you. Knowing how positively you reacted in an emergency helped set his mind at rest.”
“But why?” I whisper. “What’s so different about me? Why does he care? Why has he been shadowing me for so long?”
Mr. Dowling shakes his head softly. He reaches up and runs a blood-drenched finger across my left cheek, drawing some sort of a pattern on it. Then he runs the fingertip across the tops of my severed ears. I wince but he doesn’t withdraw. Instead he gurgles something.
“We’ve soaked up enough nutrients,” Kinslow says. “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I squint.
Kinslow swims across like a shark until his face looms large in front of mine and grins with sadistic relish. “Time to build a new Becky Smith,” he purrs.
FIVE
We climb out of the vat and Mr. Dowling races across the room to the lab equipment. He doesn’t dry himself off, so he leaves sticky red footprints in his wake. Kinslow and I follow at a more casual pace. Then Kinslow pauses to pick up a robe lying on the floor and pulls it on.
“Is there one of those for me?” I ask.
“You’re fine as you are,” he says.
“Get me a damn robe or I’ll fight you for yours,” I growl.
Kinslow rolls his eyes, but nips behind the vat and finds another robe, which he passes to me. I struggle to slip it on–the worst of the pain has eased, though it flares up again if I move about too much–but eventually I’m able to tie it shut and I follow Kinslow, hobbling slightly. I’m still in a lot of pain, but it’s nowhere near as excruciating as it was a few minutes ago.
“That’s strong stuff,” I note, rubbing some of the liquid between my fingers and then over my lips.
“It’s even more effective if you’re half-alive like me,” Kinslow grins. “I feel like I’m wired to the national grid.”
“The blood doesn’t play much of a role in the mix, does it?” I ask.
“Clever girl,” Kinslow coos. “Yeah, it’s there for color and taste more than anything else. It’s not entirely decorative–it adds an element that would be hard to replicate otherwise–but hardly essential.”
I gaze down at the exposed sections of my arms and legs. I’m like a life-sized red gummy bear. “Can I wash this off?” I ask.
“No,” Kinslow says. “There isn’t time. Besides, Mr. Dowling prefers you this way. He loves a bit of a mess.”
The clown has headed for what looks like a dentist’s chair. Ignoring the fact that he’s as red and sticky as me, he pulls on a green gown and a white mask as we approach, rolls on a pair of surgical gloves, then changes his mind and peels one of them off. He motions for me to advance.
“What’s he going to do to me?” I ask Kinslow, reluctant to place myself in the hands of a homicidal maniac after having so recently slipped through the fingers of another.
“Don’t worry,” Kinslow says. “I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t going to hurt, but he wants to help. We can’t let you stagger around in your current condition. Your guts will rot, your muscles will atrophy, your brain will curdle, you’ll be in agony all the time. To save you, we need to turn you into a new young woman.”
“I liked the old version,” I moan.
“He did too,” Kinslow says. “But Lord Wood destroyed you. It’s up to Mr. Dowling to restore what has been ruined.”
I eye the dentist’s chair suspiciously, but what choice do I have? I’m in the clown’s lair, deep underground, surrounded by enemies who could rip me apart in the twinkling of an eye. I’m in no position to make demands or refuse commands. With a groan, I climb into the chair and lie back.
Mr. Dowling produces a pair of handcuffs and taps the arms of the chair.
“What the hell?” I shout, bolting upright.
“They’re only to hold you in place while he’s working on you,” Kinslow says soothingly. “Leather straps would be better, but he prefers cuffs. You don’t have to let him chain you down–we won’t force you–but this is going to last a lot longer if we have to stop every time you squirm. And believe me, you will squirm.”
“You’d never have made a nurse,” I grumble. “No bedside manner.”
He shrugs and Mr. Dowling jangles the handcuffs.
“I really don’t feel comfortable with this,” I whisper. “It’s like a scene from a horror flick. Two guys lure the pretty heroine into their den, then tie her down and…”
“You’re not that pretty,” Kinslow cackles, and laughs even harder when I shoot him the finger. Then he sobers up. “We’re not going to do anything nasty to you. We’re trying to help you, Becky. Refuse the cuffs if you want, but you’ll regret it if you do.”
I think it over, almost tell the clown to stuff the cuffs, but then decide to gamble. Grumbling away darkly to myself, I lie back, slam my arms down on the rests and let Mr. Dowling cuff them. He then ties down my legs using a length of thick rope.
“That’s got heavy-duty wire running through it,” Kinslow tells me. “It will hold firm no matter how much you struggle.”
“That’s a relief,” I say sarcastically.
He turns to Mr. Dowling. “Where do you want to begin, boss?” The clown considers it, then squeaks and points at my midriff. “Right,” Kinslow says, producing a large pair of scissors. “This isn’t going to hurt…” He cackles like a witch. “… us!”
Leaning forward, he undoes my robe. I curse him and tell him to leave it as it is, but he ignores me. I start to panic, thinking that I’ve misread the situation, that Mr. Dowling and Kinslow are just a pair of dirty old men. But it quickly becomes apparent that neither of them has any lurid interest in my body. They’re studying me with purely clinical expressions.
Kinslow crooks his neck from left to right, to work out any kinks, then starts cutting the bandages away from around my ribs, and I brace myself for the torment that’s about to begin afresh. But at least this time there’s going to be something positive at the end of it all. Or so I want to believe.
SIX
Once Kinslow has cut through all the bandages, he pulls them out from beneath me and dumps them in a large bin set a few meters back from the chair. Mr. Dowling bends over to peer into the mess of my stomach. Dan-Dan peeled away the surrounding flesh and snapped off most of my ribs, leaving only stumps at the sides.
“What’s it like in there?” I ask Kinslow as he returns and studies the contents of my exposed stomach. When he doesn’t answer, I try raising my head to look.
“Don’t.” Kinslow stops me with a rare show of sympathy. “You don’t want to see this. Trust me.”
I lean back again and moan. It’s times like this that I wish I could cry.
Mr. Dowling reaches into the cavity and pulls something out. Maybe it’s my liver or a kidney. He nibbles on it, laughs, then tosses it at the bin. It misses and skids across
the floor. The clown doesn’t seem to care. He roots around and looks for other organs to remove.
He works on my stomach for ages, yanking bits out, scraping other areas clean. Sometimes he sews stuff together.
In a few instances, he inserts tubes and wires, connecting whatever he thinks needs to be connected.
It doesn’t hurt as much as when Dan-Dan was breaking through my rib cage, but I’m far from comfortable. I jerk and wince a lot, occasionally cry out with genuine pain.
“Can’t you give me a bloody anaesthetic?” I snarl at Kinslow.
“They don’t work on zombies,” he says. Mr. Dowling mutters something and Kinslow nods. “Besides, you’re being born again here, and birth should be painful. It’s part of the charm.”
“Typical men,” I sneer. “My mum always said that if men had to give birth, painkillers would have been invented centuries earlier than they were.”
Mr. Dowling ignores my protestations and pushes on. I whimper, shriek and swear, but I might as well be whistling nursery rhymes for all the attention he pays.
He spends a long time testing my lungs. Although our lungs don’t work the way they do in the living–we’ve no real need of them–our revitalized brains force them to operate to a limited extent, drawing air down our throats and then pumping it back up, allowing us to retain the gift of speech.
“He’s concerned,” Kinslow says as Mr. Dowling goes off looking for something. “Your lungs have been severely damaged and they’ll continue to deteriorate. He’s going to insert a small pump in your throat. He developed it himself. It’ll mean you no longer have to rely on your lungs when you’re talking.”
“Whatever,” I sniff.
The clown returns and maneuvers the pump into place. It’s a brief, painless procedure. But then he starts to remove my lungs.
“Stop!” I cry, my voice sounding slightly different, but nothing too noticeable.
“What’s wrong?” Kinslow asks.
“I don’t want him to take out my lungs. What if I need them someday?”
“You won’t. The pump will last as long as you do.”
“Even so, surely I need them for balance, or to fill the space, or…”
Kinslow squints at me. “Are you a biologist?”
“Of course not.”
“Then leave this to those who know better,” he says, and Mr. Dowling carries on over my objections, ridding my body of the lungs that I once relied on for life, dumping them on the floor for me to stare at glumly.
When he finishes with my insides, he heads off for a break. Kinslow pulls the robe closed over my stinging body, dips a sponge in the vat of blood and brains, then squeezes it over my face.
“Don’t swallow,” he says as I open my mouth. “Mr. Dowling has rejiggered your digestive system. It’ll work better than it did before–vomiting won’t be as difficult or unpleasant as it was–but it’ll be for the best if you don’t ingest anything for a few days, to let everything seal properly.”
“He should have rejiggered my lungs too while he was at it,” I grumble, still mad at the clown for what I’m sure was unnecessary overkill.
“Don’t you ever quit complaining?” Kinslow snaps.
“Well,” I grin savagely, “my dad used to say I’d stop when I died, but obviously he was wrong.”
Mr. Dowling returns with a box of metal parts and a welder’s torch. As I watch warily, he pulls open my robe and screws metal spikes into the stumps of my ribs. When they’re all in place, he picks a large, rib-shaped metal rod out of the box and fires up the torch.
“Is he sure he knows what he’s doing?” I ask nervously.
“Eighty percent,” Kinslow cackles. Mr. Dowling corrects him with a tut. “Well, maybe seventy…”
The heat from the torch on the remains of my ribs causes me to scream with all my might. I feel like my insides are on fire. I beg the clown to stop, but he calmly moves on from one rib to the next, until the entire set has been welded into place.
“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Kinslow asks with fake concern when Mr. Dowling finally turns off the torch and steps back to assess his work.
I can’t respond. I’m gasping like a dying fish, eyes wide. I still feel like I’m on fire.
“I’d toss a bucket of water over you,” Kinslow says, “but it might interfere with the machinery that Mr. Dowling put in earlier. Don’t worry. You’ll feel right as rain in no time.”
As the metal ribs start to cool, Mr. Dowling works swiftly. He trots off again and this time returns with a bucket full of scraps of human flesh. Digging out a lengthy piece, he begins stitching it to the skin at the side of my ribs.
“This is all taken from zombies, in case you were worried that we’d harvested it from living humans,” Kinslow says as I moan wordlessly, trying to make the clown stop. “It’s not that he objects to the use of living flesh–you know him better than that–but their skin wouldn’t mesh with yours. Living flesh needs fresh blood to sustain it.”
“What about my blood?” I ask weakly, my voice having returned as the heat faded. “I lost a hell of a lot of it when Dan-Dan was working me over. Are you going to give me a transfusion?”
“No point,” Kinslow says. “Undead bodies reject the blood of others, whether it’s from someone living or a zombie. You wouldn’t gain any benefits from it. The blood would simply slosh around inside you.”
“Will my body ever replace the blood that it’s lost?”
“No, but you don’t need it. Your body will adjust and find ways to work without it. You won’t be quite as fast or sharp as you were before, but you’ll be able to function in more or less the same way.”
The flesh that Mr. Dowling stitches across my steel ribs comes from all sorts of people, white, black, Asian. Some chunks are smooth as leather, others as hairy as a gorilla’s armpit. I look like a patchwork quilt when he’s finished. I hate it, but the clown nods happily and claps with delight.
“He thinks that’s his best job yet,” Kinslow tells me.
“Does this often, does he?” I growl.
Kinslow winks. “Let’s just say you’re not the first.”
Having given me a new stomach, Mr. Dowling spends ages looking at my chest, particularly at the area where my right breast used to be. He takes all sorts of measurements before disappearing for half an hour. He returns with a perfectly formed but slightly oversized boob.
“That’s a bit bigger than what I’m used to,” I note icily.
“He knows,” Kinslow says, “but he thinks it will fit better, given all the other work that’s been done to that area. You don’t mind, do you?”
I shrug. “No. If it was a lot bigger, I’d have an issue, but that one’s all right. Is he going to stick a matching breast on the other side?”
“No,” Kinslow says.
“I suppose it would cause complications if he covered the gap where my heart used to be?”
“No,” Kinslow says. “But that hole is a part of you now. He thinks you’d be denying who you truly are if you tried to cover it up.”
In a weird sort of way, I can see where he’s coming from. I find it hard to remember what I was like without the hole in my chest. As horrified as I was by it in the early days, now I think I’d miss it if the clown filled it in.
Mr. Dowling focuses on my fingers and toes once he’s sewn the breast into place. After another trip to wherever he stores these things, he screws replacement bones into the tips of each digit until I have a full set, like I did before Dan-Dan ripped them out and ground them down.
“These won’t be as effective as your original bones,” Kinslow says. “Don’t rely on them as much as you normally would. For instance, I wouldn’t recommend trying to dig them into a brick wall.”
“Will the original bones grow back?” I ask.
“Eventually, yes, but it’ll take time. We’ll monitor your progress and remove the extensions when appropriate, although they’ll snap off sooner or later if we leave them.”
/> The clown-turned-surgeon doesn’t do much with my arms and legs. There are gaping wounds running up them where Dan-Dan sliced, gouged and drilled, but Mr. Dowling doesn’t seem worried about those. He stitches a couple of the larger holes, but leaves the rest as they are.
Finished with my torso and limbs, he closes the robe, then turns to my head and starts to get artistic. Dan-Dan hammered nails into my skull. He was careful not to pierce my brain, so the clown could easily pull them out without causing any damage, but he doesn’t even try. Instead he uses them as posts to weave a crown of wire around. I argue with him–what the hell do I want with a crown?–but he just gurgles and carries on.
Next he attaches metal, elf-like ears to the sides of my head, cutting away the bits of ear that Dan-Dan left behind.
“Looking good, Tinkerbell,” Kinslow giggles.
“Get stuffed,” I growl. “I’ll rip these idiotic things off as soon as my hands are free.” But it’s an idle threat. I hate the look of the ears–Mr. Dowling holds up a mirror for me–but my sense of hearing has improved dramatically, even better than it was before Dan-Dan snipped away my natural pair.
My cheeks were sliced apart by the child-killer. Mr. Dowling puts in a few stitches at the edges to stop them widening any further, then starts painting the exposed flesh with a variety of colors.
“Stop that,” I yell. “I’ll look like a bloody rainbow.”
But, as usual, he turns a deaf ear to my outraged cries, applying his paints with a serious expression, like Timothy Jackson at work on one of his zombie drawings.
Next he focuses on my eyes. Dan-Dan didn’t do anything to them, but the clown tuts and goes to a fridge, returning with a small jar.
“What’s in that?” I ask nervously.
“Contact lenses,” Kinslow says as Mr. Dowling takes one out and leans towards me with it finely balanced on a finger.