Free Pavlov's Dogs by D.L. Snell, Thom Brannan Page A

genetically-enhanced warriors. “Bravo, men!” Looking back at the assembled throng, he waved. “You see? The Dogs are ready.”
    “Just a minute,” Donovan found himself saying. “Just one minute , Doctor. There are some unanswered questions on the table, and I think they should be addressed before we send the Dogs off on some mercy mission.”
    “Mercy mission,” Crispin repeated. “I like the sound of that.”
    Frowning, Donovan waved that away. “I’m talking about the dead, Dr. Crispin. The zombies .” He paused, looking to see whether the extra emphasis on the word had affected the project director at all. To his dismay, it had not. “The reports that we’ve received all agree; if one of us is bitten by one of them, an irreversible process begins, and then we die. We become... one of them .”
    Donovan had almost shouted the last word, silencing all other voices in the dining room. He lifted his head and looked around, then pointed at the Dogs, who still stood at attention.
    “What happens, Doctor, if one of them bites one of our Dogs? Do we know? Hell no, we don’t know.”
    Murmured assent blew through the room.
    Donovan continued.
    “Dr. Crispin, your humanitarian impulses do you credit. But, sir, we don’t even have a specimen of the walking dead to examine. There is no way to know how the finely-tuned systems of the Dogs will react to whatever it is that turns perfectly normal people into ravening maniacs.”
    “He is correct,” Ronald said. His medical team was nodding in unison. “We should wait until we have data.”
    Dr. Crispin’s face changed, the smile crumpling to something unpleasant. “More data, Mr. Michaels? And where, pray tell, will we get this data if we don’t send somebody to the mainland?”
    Donovan panicked at the thoughtful look that passed over the medical team leader’s face.
    “Dr. Crispin—”
    “No, Donovan—enough. It is my intention to send the Dogs on a combination rescue mission and specimen-collection run. As before, I feel that I’m too close for an objective view, so I ask you again, good people of the island. What should we do? All in favor of sending the Dogs, say aye.”
    A brief chorus of ayes came from scattered mouths around the room, but it was far less than half. Donovan sat back into his chair, blowing out a shaky breath. He had been worried there for a second, but it appeared as if common sense would prevail.
    “Excellent,” Dr. Crispin said. “The ayes have it. Thank you.”
    The rest of the room erupted in disbelief.
    Crispin gestured imperiously to Alpha McLoughlin, who huffed out a short command: “March.”
    The Dogs moved as one, forming up behind Dr. Crispin and following him out of the dining room like an honor guard.
    “Well, he finally got his way,” Lucy said. She turned back to her plate of rice. “Crispy has flipped his lid.”

CHAPTER TEN
     
    A SMALL YACHT pulled into the deserted wharf, its presence announced by the thumping of the twin engines. Everything else in the night was quiet, save for the gentle rhythmic slapping of waves against the piers.
    Then came the moaning.
    From boathouses and offices they came, dead men and women dressed in rental company uniforms and grease-stained overalls, a few enterprising individuals who had tried but failed to get to their boats when the disaster first hit. One of the dead dragged behind him a small suitcase, strapped to his wrist.
    As the yacht pulled up to one of the finger piers, the horde shambled faster in anticipation of a mouthful of flesh. Something to cool the furnaces in their guts. Clumsily but relentlessly, they moved forward, closing on the quiet yacht.
    It bumped against the wooden pier as the waves pushed it around, and the noise drew more and more of them from inside the fenced-off shipyard.
    Then a new sound split the night. At first, it was indistinguishable from the purr of the engines, but it rose steadily from a growl to a howl, ringing out into the