Free Re-Animator by Jeff Rovin Page B

head behind the furniture, lunging with ever-longer thrusts.
    “Cain, it’s coming out the other side! Get it!”
    “You want me to catch it?”
    “I want you to break it’s damn neck!”
    The animal squealed when the mallet poked it; it fled out the other side, scampering behind a stack of cartons.
    “Shit!”
    “I’ll get it,” Cain said, tearing at the cardboard containers.
    “No, there it goes—under the oil burner.”
    “Huh? It’ll burn!”
    West pursed his lips. “Not in this world.”
    Cain moved toward the old iron drum and was about to shove the bat beneath it when the animal leaped at him. The force of the blow surprised him, and he literally flew backward several feet, spilling into the cartons. The animal wrapped its arms and legs around his throat, the powerful claws digging into his flesh. West hurried over, and, pulling at the animal, they were able to rip it off. With a yell, Cain flung it hard to one side; the animal hit the concrete wall and stuck there for a moment, then slid slowly to the floor, leaving behind a dark smear of blood and entrails.
    After feeling the puncture wounds at his throat and determining that they weren’t severe, Cain hurried over to the carcass.
    “Rufus! No . . .”
    He turned on West, who backed slowly toward the cartons.
    “What is this? What kind of madness?”
    “Madness?” West laughed. “Are you that blind?” Suddenly, West’s mouth fell open, and he pointed wildly. “Cain, behind you—look out!”
    Cain spun, his bat at the ready. The cat’s shadow moved in the swaying light, but the animal itself was still. When he turned back to West, the young man was leaning against the wall, giggling maniacally.
    “Daniel, you’re priceless! You jump for a dead cat and you call me mad.”
    Cain lowered the bat and stared in amazement, first at West and then at Rufus. Everything was dreamlike, surreal; he had to get upstairs, back to sanity.
    Tugging a plastic sheet from the top of the highboy, Cain gently wrapped the cat within it and headed upstairs. He was determined to examine the animal and see exactly how it had died. After that, finding out just who was mad would be simple. If the cat hadn’t suffocated and his roommate were playing some kind of game, then West was mad. He’d put him out the next morning, and that would be the end of it.
    But if the cat had died in the trash, then Cain had problems.
    Very serious problems.

CHAPTER
    6
    T he two young men were bent over the table in West’s room, the cat spread before them on the plastic sheet. Cain was still bare-chested, while West wore his tie and shirt-sleeves, both garments blood-splattered. Cain was composed now and staring blankly at the cat, whereas West was agitated and in disarray, something wrong almost everywhere in his appearance: one brow was arched, the other straight; his mouth was twisted on one side, flat on the other; even his sleeves had been hastily rolled to uneven lengths.
    Inwardly, however, the men were the opposite of what they appeared. Cain’s brain was whirling with doubt and disbelief, while West’s was a picture of reason itself.
    “It’s really quite simple,” he explained patiently. “All life is a physical, magnetic and chemical process, correct? It stands to reason, that if one can find extremely fresh specimens and recharge that chemical process—bang, we have reanimation!”
    “Your theory is not new, West.”
    He sat back on the stool. “But my reagent is. Even Gruber didn’t have this mixture. He was a genius, but his feet were set on the wrong path, on recharging the brain through the circulatory system. He felt it was a more even means of distributing the compound, one which would provide less of a shock to the system. Unfortunately, that method also required a larger dose of the chemical, which was what killed him.”
    Cain faced him. “You mean he tried this on himself?”
    West waved his hands from side to side. “That isn’t important now. The