Thirteen Hours Read online

  But the heart wouldn't beat. It wouldn't make the sound of a normal heart, the steady lub-dub of life and love.

  And Hans didn't know where to go from there.

  Shuffling sounded from the front door. Hans rose from his desk to greet Joan and Therese as they walked into the room. Joan held a large binder to her chest, stacked tight with papers.

  "What have you taken?"

  "Nuttin' that no one will miss," Joan said, grinning. "How's it going in here?"

  "Tell me his name," Hans demanded.

  "Well, well, manners," Joan teased.

  "I'm sorry. We just don't have a lot of time."

  "I know. We think he's Thaddeus Lacko," Therese said. She peeled back the sheet from the body again as she sat on the couch. She stared at Thad for a lot longer this time, as if she was assessing to see if the name truly fit. When she said it again out loud, it was slow and methodical like the ticking of a clock.

  "Thaddeus Kiah Lacko. Thad for short. He was born in London to a moderately well-to-do family before the zombie crisis. They lost everything when their father was infected. He killed their mother and seven of Thad's siblings before he and his sister Rebeckah ran away. The records office lost track of them, then."

  "So how do you know it's him for sure?" Hans asked. He studied the man's face, assessing the name on his tongue. He had to admit—he liked Thad for short, but didn't want to get his hopes up.

  "Because," Joan said as she placed down the large book. "The papers wrote about his family endlessly after death."

  "I don't remember reading about it. About him. I would have remembered..."

  "Of course, but you read the post. These are the tabloids, the penny dreadful retellings I'm talkin' about. I read lots of 'em at the convent, slipping them under my pillow. So I could find them again now and they mention, between the blood and guts of the undead, that Thad played guitar and ukulele."

  Joan passed over an article, but the black and whiting blurred away to nothing in front of Hans. Joan seemed to notice Hans's struggle, so she continued to narrate her findings.

  "Near the back of the archives, in the more traditional papers, we found several articles about a pack of travelling circus or buskers; the Post was never good when they talked about the homeless. But someone sketched the group of them living together by the ocean. Look at the drawing."

  Hans blinked so he could focus at the new clipping Joan pushed towards him. A group of young people, including a woman with long black hair like the boy standing next to her, kicked around in the ocean's waves. The drawing was crude, but the heart shaped face of the man gave him away. It was the man on the slab.

  "How do you know this is Thad, though?" Hans repeated. "I want to believe you, but I don't know for sure."

  "Because the details match up. Yes, the papers get details wrong, but we think this is the same person. And if you save him," Therese said, "you can ask him for sure. Right? How has your work been going?"

  Hans sighed. He ran a hand through his dark, pin-straight hair and gestured at the bench. "I've done all I can."

  "What do you mean?" Therese said. "You seem very perturbed."

  "I am. I can't make a mechanical heart. The brain stem—yes; no problem. But the heart is a necessary organ."

  "Why?" Therese asked. "Either all organs are necessary or they're not. If you can make a brain stem no problem, I don't understand the hold up over a heart."

  "This is going to sound silly," Hans said. "But there is some reason to the philosophy I've been reading. Not all of it, but some. The heart is a metaphor as much as it is an organ. We fall in love with the heart. It is the source of all feeling. If his is mechanical, then I worry that the love will also be gone."

  "So he will become violent?" Joan asked. "Did that happen with the rats?"

  "No. But rats are different. I worry that this man—Thad or whomever—won't be fully human. Anything that has been dead cannot be human again. And anything without a heart, well..."

  "These aren't your words, Hans," Therese said. "Don't let the men with white hair get into your head. You know what you want. And how do you know it? You feel it. You know what's right."

  "That may be so. But death," Hans said. "I've never experienced it. So how can I know what I'm doing is good?"

  "Izzy loves. Izzy knows us," Therese said. She went over to where the dog slept and held up her small paws. Izzy rose from her slumber and nuzzled Therese. Izzy hummed in her musical way, but it now sounded too mechanical in Hans's ear.

  "Izzy is a dog, destined for servitude."

  "She is not. She is living and breathing. Thinking."

  "Machine..."

  "Shush, you. I will not tolerate this attitude." Therese left Izzy's side so she could take Hans's face in her hands and forced him to stare her in the eye. She saw right though his skin, past his skull, to the very thoughts in his mind. Her fixated stare moved from anger to compassion.

  "Oh," she breathed. "You want to fall in love with him, don't you?"

  Hans could only nod. She let go of his face and took his hands in hers. She almost opened her mouth but stopped herself. There was no reason to falling in love. Out of all the things the moral philosophy books tried to rationalize, love was never one. Love could be a metaphor, but it was still real. It did exist.

  And Hans's heart—a scientist's heart—knew that to be true, too. So the organ needed to beat in order to be alive.

  "Even Izzy has a heart," Hans finally said. "That was never damaged by the infection. I want Thad to have one, too."

  "You know it takes longer than a look," Therese said. "You can't just fall in love as soon as he wakes."

  "How do you know? Did your heart not burn when you first saw Joan?"

  "Yes. But it burned out of wrath. I couldn't stand her." Therese shot Joan a playful look across the room. Joan grinned widely, beaming at Therese's obvious displeasure. Therese only laughed. "Oh, I thought she was dirty and ridiculous. I also could not face myself. My desires..."

  "Yes, I understand that," Hans said. "But you fell in love with her. You got over it. Had your happily ever after."

  "Perhaps." Therese pursed her lips. "But it will take more than even thirteen hours to fall in love with Thad. And we don't even have all of that."

  "I know. I always know all these things, Therese. But life is so imperative. I must give him life first."

  "And what if you give him this life, but he doesn’t love you?"

  Hans was quiet. He knew that was an option out of many from this experiments, and it wasn't the far worse one set before him. But he also knew he had a duty to give Thad a fighting chance, even if Thad took that fight elsewhere. "I understand."

  "You always understand. Always, always." Therese huffed. "But you never think of the practical side of things. Like: where do we even get a heart?"

  "I... I may have an idea," Joan said. "But we should all wear black."

  Chapter Eight

  Clad all in black and feeling like a funeral parade, Hans followed Joan and Therese through the London city square. They avoided all the public spots, using back alleys where soundproof walls didn't protect them from the zombies. Joan stayed in front, a small rifle strapped across her back. She'd shocked Hans when she appeared at the foot of the stairs dressed like a small bandit, but since Therese didn't seem shocked by her attire, Hans figured it was not the time to ask questions.

  "Almost there," Joan said. She surveyed the corner ahead of them, her rifle on her shoulder, then waved them in after her. "It's safe, but be quiet. Make sure no one follows you."

  Therese held back, stepping behind Hans so he was in the middle. She lifted up her dress and pulled a knife from her garter. This time, Hans could not hide his surprise.

  "Girls will be girls," Therese said, smiling wide. "A walk alone at night means I need to be prepared."

  "I see. When all of this is done, please teach me your ways."

  Therese laughed and shoved Hans forward. Joan held open the back d
oor to what seemed to be a pub from the smell of alcohol and barley. Once all of them were inside, Therese locked the door behind them. She placed her knife back in her garter and Joan strapped the rifle back in place. She took down a candle from a post and used it to guide her way down a long hallway. The sound of a piano grew louder and louder, along with the guff sounds of people moving as they approached a wooden door at the end of the hallway. Joan knocked three times.

  A man with wild red hair answered. He had a large, unlit pipe in his mouth, but he chewed on it as if it were a pacifier. His cheeks were shaped and coloured like apples. Hans blinked again. No, those cheeks were covered with blood.

  "Joan," the man said through his pipe. "My lad. Never thought I'd see you again."

  "Xavier. Not the time for pleasant stories. I need your help."

  The man, Xavier, surveyed Hans and Therese. He seemed unaffected. "Party?"

  "Friends and family. Nothing more."

  "All right." Xavier kicked the door open all the way and ushered everyone inside. The piano music had ceased, but the clicking of a metronome remained. The pungent smell of alcohol mixed with chemicals and blood. Hans was shocked to see several other people in the room, in various states of undress, and in various states of bloodiness.

  "What is this place?" Hans asked.

  "A clinic. A true free clinic," Xavier said. "I ain't a doctor, but Luce—Lucinda—over there is."

  A woman with long blonde pinned back over her slender shoulders with a beetle hair barrette barely waved from a table. She worked with glasses at the end of her nose, magnifying the body in front of her on a wooden table, designed no differently than the one where Hans, Therese, and Joan often ate breakfast in the mornings. The man Lucinda operated on was still alive, Hans was sure, but very, very ill. In the low light, it was hard to tell what exactly his injury was, but Lucinda's blood-covered hands indicated she still had much work to do.

  "There are other clinics," Hans said, turning away from the body. "All around the city, many associated with reputable hospitals. Why is this one here? And in a bar, no less?"

  "You think a drink's not needed before some surgery?" Xavier asked. He chuckled, discarding his pipe to the side, as he poured out several glasses on a counter. He handed one of them to Lucinda, next to her surgical implements.

  "We actually treat the sick in our clinic," Lucinda said, still not glancing away from her body. "Including the infected."

  Hans gasped. He surveyed the room with more scrutiny this time. All the people who waited for services held a hand over a section of their body—a foot, a hand, sometimes even a neck—that were often bitten by stray zombies.

  "You know how to cure it?" he asked, hope in his voice.

  "Not quite. But we do better than most," Lucinda said. Blood started to ooze from a man's wound in front of her. She stopped it right away. The area around it turned green. Hans baulked. The green area only appeared after death in most cases. Lucinda continued to work as more assistants brought over bowls of water and gauze. She slipped her glasses even further down her nose. She didn't respond anymore. A million questions buzzed on Hans's tongue.

  "I met Lucinda on my boat ride over here," Joan answered. "I told her we'd keep in touch since I said I knew a famous scientist. Even if the university had done you wrong, you were still smart. So I told Lucinda the speech you told me. More or less. And everything changed for the better."

  "Thirteen hours," Lucinda repeated. "We knew that number intuitively. But we were relieved to have it confirmed. Back in my hometown, I had been treating people who thought they were bitten. I managed to stave off the infection, never quite curing it, but definitely making it lay dormant for longer. The after death realm always frightened people, though. The thirteen hours gave us more time to grieve and time to plan."

  Hans stared at Lucinda, still amazed. "Have you shared your findings with anyone? About staving off infection? Surely, the hospitals here would want to know..."

  "Of course," Xavier answered for Lucinda this time. "But no professor or medical professional will listen to us. Even your funding was cut."

  "But they can't do this," Hans said. He gestured towards the disarray of the back room and the quite frankly unsanitary area. "If you can stave off what's already there for this long, and you work here, can you imagine what you could do if you were given funding?"

  "We can imagine. It's happened, but all these stories have the same ending of rejection, exile, or death. I should know." Xavier extended his hand to Hans, who took it reluctantly. "I'm Xavier Matheson. I started out in the same university as you."

  "What happened?" Hans knew the name, he was sure of it, but he couldn't place it. "Did they cut your funding, too?"

  "Worse. Cut my thumb." Xavier held up his left hand, which he'd kept obscured in his pocket or behind his back this entire time. The thumb was missing half its knuckle, a nub without a fingernail. "As a warning, you see. Then they sent me into the outer lands to fend for myself."

  "They wanted you to die there," Therese said. "Let's not mince words here."

  "But I didn't die," Xavier said. "Because I found Lucinda. She patrolled the area and managed to stave off whatever infection. See the green?" Xavier pointed to the ring of his thumb in the light. "I'm infected. For sure. But I haven't died. I haven't become a zombie."

  "How long ago?" Hans asked.

  "Five years now. Come spring."

  Hans was awestruck. The insanity of this backroom suddenly became order as he surveyed it once again. The people who held their wounds and waited while Lucinda worked weren't death sentences. They could stave off infection and cover up the lingering green that remained; they could have normal lives. "How come no one else knows? This is remarkable."

  "Because Stevenson and the university makes a lot more money when people are frightened. It's better for people to soundproof their home and be shunted to the outer lands to die. It's a class system. It's a war," Xavier said. "But I refuse to play the game."

  "So you... what? Perform archaic surgeries by candle light and hope to keep those infected under control?"

  "More or less." Xavier shrugged. "So far, so good."

  "What about Thad?" Hans asked.

  "We have a body," Therese added when no one recognized the name. "His name is Thad. He was infected but sent to a sanctioned clinic."

  "And staked?" Xavier asked.

  Therese and Joan both nodded.

  Lucinda let out a gasp. The man in front of her cried out in pain, then clutched his stomach. The green hue around the wound calmed. The blood stopped. So did the body, lying back on the table as still as snow.

  "Is he dead?" Hans asked.

  "No," Lucinda said. "But he needs to rest. Sometimes the extraction process doesn't always work. His is in the leg. Femoral artery. He could bleed out too easily, so it's touch and go."

  "And if he does die?" Hans asked.

  Lucinda wiped a streak of blood off her forehead then took off her magnifying glasses. "Then I guess you'll have thirteen hours to fix him. Won't you?"

  "That's if I get this experiment to work first," Hans said.

  Lucinda nodded. She shot a look to Xavier who also nodded. With a wave of his large arms, Xavier led them back into a different room, away from the waiting area full of inflected and desperate people. This room was almost too white and too clean. It baffled Hans as to why surgeries weren't done here, but maybe they were, too.

  "Please, have a seat. We need to talk," Lucinda said. Xavier shut the door behind them both, locking it. "Tell me everything you know."

  "Everything?"

  Lucinda and Xavier both nodded.

  Hans's eyes widened. All he could see was Thad's face and the mark in the centre of his chest. He didn't know where to start for quite some time. When he did, it all came out in waves. He reiterated his lecture, though both Lucinda and Xavier could follow his outline point by point as if they'd actually read his dissertation. It was in the university library, and Lucinda
could probably go in there and read it without much issue, Hans figured. The thought of people reading it and benefiting from his research gave him the strength to keep talking, even if his ideas had been publicly mocked. He told them about building a lab in the house, but not being able to practice on cadavers. He even mentioned Joan and the bulbs that may one day keep zombies away through the black tulip flower, and Joan and Therese's relationship. Nothing seemed to rattle Xavier and Lucinda. It was only when Hans explained how he'd come across the body of Thaddeus Lacko that they started to worry.

  "So it's a trap."

  "Yes. Like Xavier's," Joan confirmed. "I didn't want to bring Hans here and possibly disturb everything, but I knew there was no time left."

  "We would have wanted to wait until the flowers bloomed, yes." Lucinda nodded. "We could have kept window boxes on the clinic, and Xavier could have opened his distribution network for trading the bulbs, make back your fortune as you published papers. But we have to move forward now."

  "What does that mean?" Hans said.

  "You need to make him. Cure him."

  "I know that. But I still need a heart in order for it to work."

  "We can get you that," Lucinda said. "And when you cure him, you'll need a place to hide. You won't be able to support yourself anymore."

  "We can barely support ourselves now," Therese said. "In our house or in hiding, what does it matter? They'll come for us."

  "But the flowers," Joan said again. "We need to wait until winter is over before leaving. Then we will know for sure if London can be renewed."

  Everyone was quiet at the table. Information spun inside of Hans's mind, amazed at what his wife and her lover had gotten up to in their own time. Therese seemed to be the designated scribe, writing down the plan as it came along, and Joan the interloper who had all the connections. Hans was just a disgraced doctor, much like Lucinda. While she made sure the infection stayed away as long as possible, he picked up others who didn't make it and gave them second chances.