Page 28 of Killer Clone

Hagen dropped onto the sofa next to her and told her to put black olives on his half.

He was ready for the day to die.

11

Otto Walker donned his lab coat, snapped on his blue latex gloves, and looked down at the first corpse of the day.

He didn’t know the man’s name, didn’t know anything about him. He wasn’t old, Otto could see that. So many of the dead that passed in front of him were little more than loose skin on ancient bones. The men bald or almost bald. The women with short, white hair as stiff as a broom’s bristles.

This man wasn’t like that.

Otto doubted the deceased had made it past his mid-fifties. He’d been overweight when he was alive. The man’s belly rose from the middle of the embalming table like the top of a giant muffin.

A bank would’ve suited this guy. Otto could imagine him in a shirt and tie, buttons straining at the holes, rejecting someone’s loan application. Too risky, he’d have thought, before turning down the request.

And here he was…rejected by life.

There were no signs of any wounds or injuries, none of the accidental damage that so scarred a middle-aged body and took such skill to hide. Whatever killed this guy had been internal.

A heart attack, probably. Or a stroke.

Something was wrong with the flow of his blood.

Otto held up a scalpel, his forefinger resting on the back of the blade. The handle sat comfortably across his palm.

Start near the windpipe. Run your finger down the groove of the neck until you reach the spot.

He hesitated. Sweat pooled inside the rubber glove. This happened every time, despite all his training as an apprentice mortician. Nervous excitement was a side effect of loving one’s job.

Otto always found his own carotid arteries with ease. Uncovering the artery in someone else, someone who didn’t have a pulse, was only a little harder.

He found the spot and went for it.

Placing the scalpel’s tip on the right side of the cadaver’s neck, he drew a short line. A tiny amount of blood welled up. He pressed a fingertip to the skin, testing its resistance. The scalpel had barely sliced through the epidermis, so he tried again, applying more pressure this time. Otto dug through the skin.

He tried again, pressing harder this time. The scalpel slid deeper, parting layers of fat and fascia.

There they were. The carotid artery and the jugular vein, pale blue under the embalming room’s fluorescent lights. A thrill curled through him as he made his first incision into the carotid artery.

The blood that seeped out was thicker and richer than he’d seen before. Dark, sluggish, like oil from a broken machine. He pried the edges of the wound open wider, exposing the frayed ends of the severed artery.

He reached for the arterial tube, a length of smooth plastic attached to the embalming pump. With a steady hand, Otto inserted the tube into the artery, securing it in place.

With that done, he turned his attention to the jugular vein. A fresh incision. Another tube, this one for drainage. He twisted it in deep, forcing the opening wider until he was sure nothing would clot too soon.

Pleased with his efforts, he adjusted the pressure dial on the embalming machine.

A moment later, preserving fluid surged through the artery, forcing blood out through the drainage tube. It pulsed in sluggish waves, snaking through the transparent plastic until it emptied into a grate in the floor.

Otto leaned back on his stool, still clutching the scalpel.

This was the part he liked best. He could sit here for hours, just watching.

Once, that blood had been life itself—oxygen, nutrients, thought, movement, being. A whole existence, carried through veins, feeding the brain, sustaining the heart.

And now?

It was garbage.

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