“I cannot answer that. Indeed, I am most anxious to ask him about the experience when he reanimates.”
Nero opened his mouth, but he hadn’t the foggiest idea what he wanted to say. To buy time, he looked back down at the file and noticed a detail that Gelpack wouldn’t care about, but for humans, it was pretty significant. “He’s a devout Catholic,” Nero said. “I’m pretty sure the Pope is against living as a zombie.”
“Who is the Pope? I do not understand.”
No kidding. And Nero didn’t know where to begin.
“Do you wish to break his sternum? That will release his soul and he will die as usual. Though I am confused. You said of all the recruits, you most wished this one to survive.”
He had. He did. They desperately needed medical expertise. “We don’t want zombie doctors,” he said. Except in the realm of the weird, was a zombie all that awful? Assuming he could still work and function as a normal person. “Will he be… the same?”
“He will be able to eat other foods, not just brains.”
“That’s not what I was asking!”
“You are angry. I have miscalculated.” Gelpack twisted the wolf body such that the sternum was facing upward. “You must break his chest. I do not have the physical strength for such a blow. A quick strike with your hand or a mallet should be effective.”
“No!” Nero recoiled, revolted by the idea of slamming his hand—or anything—down on the wolf’s chest.
“I believe there is a vise in the garage—”
Nero held up his hands. “Stop! Just… give me a minute.” So many things crowded into his brain. Ethical considerations, religious doctrine, even the financial commitment to keep a guy on ice with no idea if they could bring him back to the living. But if they could… wasn’t it worth the risk? Better zombie than dead?
He had no idea what Dr. Wesley Barren would want and no way to make this kind of ethical choice in the moment. Which meant his best option was to kick the decision up the chain of command. “Don’t break it yet. We’ll keep him here and maybe the captain will know what to do.” He’d never been more grateful to be a grunt.
With that, he pushed the body back into the unit and sealed it. He prayed the guy didn’t get lost in the paperwork. Ten years from now, would someone open the unit and say, “Who the hell is this?”
Meanwhile, Nero rubbed his forehead and tried to focus on something more productive. “How are the others?”
“All awake, human, and eating under the supervision of their partners. I—” Gelpack cut off his words. If Nero had to guess, he’d say the alien was frowning, but it was difficult to say on a Jell-O face. Sometimes the guy’s whole body rippled when he stood too close to an air-conditioning vent. “I believe you should see them yourself. I did not understand their reactions to becoming human again.”
Great. Why couldn’t anyone wake up human and be grateful they weren’t dead? That had been Nero’s reaction. But then his last memory had been of a wolf clamping down hard on his shoulder while his bones broke. Waking up alive had been a complete surprise. Waking up as a wolf had given him a badass feeling that had never fully disappeared.
“I’ll go check on them now.” He paused as he looked at the alien, pushing to express his thoughts in words that even an alien could understand. “I’m very, very grateful to you, Gelpack. I know that you’re the reason most of them survived.”
“I am the reason they all survived,” Gelpack said with no apparent emphasis or ego.
He sounded like it was simple fact, which flat-out terrified Nero. He still didn’t fully trust the alien, and yet four new members of Wulf, Inc. were completely indebted to him. Or five, if you counted the frozen doctor.
“Um, well, I’m grateful.”
“You are welcome. Unless there is anything else, I will go make notes now.”
“Yeah. Go ahead.” And what he wouldn’t give to get a close-up look at Gelpack’s notes. “I’ll go find the others.”
JOSH WOKEachy from a deep sleep and did what he always did. He reached for his phone. There was email and news to read, a couple of games he liked to play to wake his mind, and all the myriad ways a smartphone could distract him from the things he didn’t want to think about. He knew exactly what he was doing. Hell, he’d developed avoidance to an art form. He even had journal articles uploaded to his phone so that he could dive into science when his personal life got too stressful.
Except he didn’t have his phone. Nero hadn’t returned it, which left him staring at the utilitarian brown curtains over his window and listening to someone humming as they banged around the bedroom next door.
Werewolf. The word whispered through his mind, and he resolutely focused on something else. But the sound of ABBA being sung badly next door was just making the anger worse, so he got up and headed for the shower. His bedroom had an attached bathroom with toiletries. He could focus on that.
Which only worked until he was clean. But coming into the bedroom reminded him that he’d left his luggage back in the cage room. Cages and howling wolves intruded on his thoughts, not to mention the cattle prod–wielding alien. Anger boiled up, acidic in his throat, but he shoved it all back down. The emotions were too raw for him to face. Better to think about getting dressed.
He found sweats in the dresser. He pulled the pants on and prayed they stayed on his narrow hips. The T-shirt was loose, but comfortably so, and he distracted himself by studying the werewolf image on the front, complete with sparkly white canines and razor-sharp claws. Two days ago he would have sneered that the image was anthropomorphized to a silly degree. The wolf had human-like biceps, broad masculine shoulders, and a glint to his eyes. But now that he knew werewolves were fact, the image was unsettlingly real.
Werewolf.
Was that who he was now? A testosteroned-up werewolf who could rip people to shreds at will? The idea appealed as much as it revolted him. Who wouldn’t want to be a big, bad wolf? How many times as a kid had he wished he could huff and puff and blow people into the next county? Or rip them to shreds like Wolverine did? And yet, as he’d grown older, he’d joined the ranks of people who made fun of bulked-up meatheads. He’d never been a Thor fan. He preferred Iron Man, the smartass geek who built a supersuit so he could fly and blow up the baddies.
