"Then you're 'good to go.'" She patted the girl on the leg and turned towards the back hallway. "I guess I better go look at what Harley wants to show me."

"But you don't want to see it, do you."

Rachel stopped and looked back to see Marisa favoring her with an evaluating look of her own.

"No," she admitted. "I'm a veterinarian, not a human doctor. I'm used to the sight of dead animals. But I'm no different about dead human bodies than anybody else. I don't want to see this. Actually, I'm a little scared."

"But what about you at the fire door with your little light?" Marisa cocked her head in curiosity. "You didn't seem bothered at all then."

"Because I stopped viewing those things out there as bodies," Rachel pursed her lips and thought aloud. "Whatever they were...and no matter what they look like...they aren't really corpses anymore. They're...something else."

"Something else?"

"I don't know!" Rachel looked at the ceiling in despair. "It's like they're organisms of some kind now. But they don't make any sense! Gerald said it might be something contagious, but I mocked him for it and treated him like an ass. Now it turns out he was right! And he got killed by something I promised him couldn't happen."

Marisa pulled herself to her feet and gripped Rachel's shoulder.

"Gerald was an ass," her voice was low and fierce. "He wasn't right about anything, Doc. He just shot off his mouth without knowing what he was talking about, and things happened to turn out that way. You may know science, but I know people. Gerald was an idiot who got himself killed, and even worse he killed the only person who stuck up for him at the same time. On the other hand, you're actually trying to understand this thing. And when you told him that, it was because you believed it. That's different."

"I know," she conceded. "It just doesn't make it feel much better."

"That's because you're not Gerald. Hey, look...believe me, I know what it's like to be scared. Do you want me to come with you?"

Yeah, and even scared you followed Harley into store with a killer corpse and did what needed doing. This is starting to get embarrassing.

"No, it's okay," Rachel assured her. "I'll be fine. Besides, I won't be alone."

"You sure?" Marisa queried, "I don't mind. After all, I already cried all over your shoulder tonight. And since I'm sure I look like a drowned raccoon now, it's not like you're going to be doing me any damage."

"Thanks, Marisa," Rachel laughed. "I won't forget it. But I'll be fine. Besides, now that the bathrooms are open, I think Stacey wants a little company so she can go before she pops."

"Seriously!" the little waitress chimed in while carefully pulling herself up from her place beside Deke, "And while we're there, we'll see if we can de-raccoonify you."

"That bad, huh?" Marisa groaned and fell in step beside her fellow waitress as they headed down the back hallway towards the door to the store.

"Actually, it sort of gives you that wild and tousled look so many guys seem to find sexy."

"Really?"

"Nope, not really. Sorry, but you pretty much look like a rabid raccoon."

Marisa gave a long suffering sigh as she pulled the door open, and rolled her eyes at Rachel who had been following behind. She gave Stacey a friendly shove through the door before making a mock throttling motion behind her back, then followed the smaller girl into the darkened store beyond. The pair of them laughed about something before pushing their way into the girl's bathroom.

This left Rachel standing at the hallway door, trying to see into the gloom of the unlighted store.

All alone.

She knew it was supposedly empty and safe now, yet couldn't help but feel vulnerable while standing at the edge of the darkened area. Tonight just wasn't the night for dark rooms. Harley had come back in here earlier to make sure everything was still dead, but the gloomy store still filled her with unease.

"Harley?" she called in a soft voice. "Hey, Harley? You in here?"

The door to the men's bathroom cracked open, spilling light into the short back hallway of the store.

"I'm in here, Doc."

Now it was Rachel's turn to roll her eyes.

"You want to 'show me something' in the men's bathroom?"

"Yeah." The irony of her remark seemed to be lost on him. "I drug the thing in here so you would have light to see by."

Well, that made sense.

She knew she might as well get it over with. Steeling her nerve, Rachel took a deep breath and marched over to the door. She pushed through with firm resolve, then stopped and sized up the scene in front of her.

Harley knelt on the tile floor by what must have been the creature in question. It wasn't immediately obvious since he had covered it with a vinyl tarp he must have found somewhere in the store. It appeared she would be spared her encounter with a corpse for a moment longer. Still, her eyes were drawn to the blue square of vinyl like reluctant magnets. The tarp was a considerate idea on his part, but it just meant there was one more grisly "reveal" she had to get through.

"Let's just get this over with." She nodded at the covered figure.

"You sure?" Harley asked. "Marisa told you how I killed this thing, right?"

"Yes, she did. She said you beat its brains out with her bat. I understand this won't be pretty, so let's get on with it."

"Well, that's just it." He stared down at the covered form and readjusted his hat. "I beat something out of it, but a lot of it wasn't brains."

"What?" Rachel frowned at the man, then down at the figure under the tarp, "What do you mean?"

"Okay, I'll show you. Maybe you can tell me what this stuff is. By the way, there's a trash can under the sink there if you get sick."

Rachel waved the suggestion off with a grimace and bent to look as he slowly pulled the tarp back.

It wasn't pretty.

The thing lay there with what was left of its skull turned to the side. Its head had been beaten down, almost flat, to a level about even with where its ears used to be. Shards of stained bone stuck up through shreds of flaking grey scalp, and a large section of skull had split off from the back and now hung loose by a flap of leathery skin. If it had been dead before...it was deader than dead now.

It was at the hole created by the loose piece of skull that Harley pointed.

"See that?" He indicated a fibrous white material protruding from the wound. "That's not brain. What is it?"

"Well," she winced at the intensified smell caused by him lifting the tarp, "it's an old corpse, Harley. It could be a lot of things...like a product of plain old ordinary decay."

"I don't think so," he muttered. "I finished off the other zombie I had disabled earlier tonight. Its head is full of the same stuff. Two bodies, that must have come from different coffins, and yet the same stuff in both of their heads. What are the odds of that?"

She thought about it for a second and realized he had a point.

"Hmmm," Rachel scowled and bent lower for a better look. "I can't argue with that. It's still probably nothing, but let's see what we have here. You have a stick, or screwdriver, or something?"

"I've got my pocket knife."

"Even better," the veterinarian grunted got down on her knees beside the body. She pulled the tarp from the rest of it while Harley fished in his pocket for the knife. The sight of the full cadaver didn't bother her as much as she feared. As a matter of fact, the doctor started to feel that the filthy clothes hanging off the thing were the only reminders of its former humanity. She gave it a long slow look from head to foot and realized she had just started the same type of cursory examination she would give if about to perform a necropsy.

And why not? Like you told Marisa, this isn't a person and it isn't exactly a corpse anymore either. It's like some kind of organism, and here is your chance to figure this thing out.

"Okay then," She took the proffered knife and bent to the task, "I guess I get to be the first person in history to perform an autopsy to figure out why something wasn't dead. We might as well start with the area in question."

"We?"

"Yep, you killed it, Mister...you get to help me cut it up." Rachel severed the flap of skin holding the hanging piece of skull. "You aren't going to go squeamish on me now, are you? Oh, and get me a roll of toilet paper, please. My operating gloves are out in the truck so I'm going to have to improvise."

"Nah, it ain't squeamishness." Harley stood and went into the nearest of the toilet stalls. "I just don't like staying where I can't see what's going on outside."

He returned with the requested roll, which she took and set beside her. Tearing off a piece, Rachel used it to move the piece of cranium aside. She considered the ruined skull before her then used another piece of tissue to hold a bone fragment as she began to cut that free as well.

The pieces came off easier than she expected.

"Well," she continued talking while she worked; the monster's head was a wreck and pieces came off easily, "I don't think this thing is going to get back up, but I'm not confident enough in that to sit here in a bathroom all alone with it. So I'd appreciate it if you hung around till I'm done. You can stand over there and look out the door if you want but...well, well, well, check this out."

"What is it?" Harley leaned over to look at her handiwork.

Rachel had now removed the side of the cadaver's skull facing upwards, revealing a side view of the brainpan's contents.

"This," she indicated a squashed, grayish area in the rear half of the head, "is brain." It filled about half to two thirds of the skull. "This..." she now indicated the white fibers filling the rest of the cranium, "isn't brain. But you knew that. Have you had medical training, Harley?"

"Nah, not exactly," he followed her demonstration with intent interest, "just some fairly basic field first aid. Stuff like that. So show me what I didn't know."

"Uh huh." She eyed him doubtfully then continued. "Well, notice how these threads seem to flow towards the back of the skull and then downwards. I'm betting..." She used the knife to cut out a piece of the brain and then set it aside. "Yep...looky here."

"What am I looking at, Doc?"

"It's not just on the outside of the brain, it's penetrating into it. And mainly into the hindbrain areas, which are the most intact." she tilted her head, concentrating, then cut deeper and lifted another piece out of the way. "Interesting."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it seems to continue on down the brain stem to the foramen magnum."

"The whozit?"

"The hole at the bottom of the skull," She frowned at the indicated area. "It's especially thick here, and now it's back on the outside again too. Hmmm...I wonder..." She inserted the knife into the mass.

The corpse thrashed, causing Rachel to scream and both of them to dive away from it.

Suddenly, the bathroom seemed a very small place. The veterinarian scrambled backwards in a blind panic, trying to put as much distance as possible between her and the flailing body. That resulted in her smacking into the wall and clanging the back of her head against the bottom of a urinal hard enough to see stars. The pain blinded her, filling her vision with exploding fireworks...but it didn't slow her down from scrabbling under the nearby divider into a toilet stall.

Any shelter in a storm.

Rachel struggled to her feet, and immediately clambered up onto the john. She put her hands against each side of the stall for balance and froze in place. Her heart hammered in her ears. She took a few seconds to get her breath back under control, and for her vision to clear, then tried listening...

Nothing.

No sounds of fighting, screaming, or even feet shuffling to indicate what could be happening on the other side of that divider. Just the soft sound of the fan. Rachel strained her hearing for any clue of what might be going on.

Still nothing.

After a couple more seconds of silence she decided to risk making noise of her own.

"Harley?" she called softly.

"Yeah, Doc?"

He couldn't have sounded more nonchalant if he tried. She already had a pretty good idea what had happened...as impossible as it seemed...but the idea of him just waiting out there grinning about the event really ticked her off.

"I'm guessing you're okay?" she asked sweetly through clenched teeth.

"Other than a mild heart attack, yeah." At least it didn't sound like he was laughing. "It looks like you hit a nerve on that thing. It ain't doing nothing now. I think it's safe."

"No," she retorted. "Actually, it may not be safe. Here, take this."

Rachel climbed down and slid the pocket knife under the divider and back into the room. She heard the sound of his boots approach, and then stop.

"Okay," he answered. "But it ain't doing nothing. Besides, I've still got the bat."

"Harley, listen to me."

"Okay."

"I want you to cut its head off."

"You want me to what?! Seriously?"

"Yes." She felt foolish as hell talking from inside the stall, but if the inkling of a theory she had forming was even near correct...if those threads were doing what she thought they were... "Can you do that?"

"Sure...I guess," she could hear the shrug in his voice. "If that's what you want."

"That's what I want."

"Okay, just a minute."

She heard him approach the body, then stop again. The tarp rustled, and she realized he was imitating her trick with the tissues and using it as a way to hold its head still without touching it. There came a surprisingly short period of rhythmic rustling of the tarp she knew had to be caused by him holding it against the things head while he sawed on the neck, then the clomp of his boots returning to the stall.

"Okay, Doc. All done."

"Tell me you aren't standing out there with the head in your hands."

"I'm not." Now he laughed. "It's down by the thing's feet. What the hell, Doc?"

"Sorry," she grouched and came out the door of the stall. "I'm just rattled and jumpy. And I've got a real bad feeling about what I've seen so far."

"Fair enough." Harley didn't seem insulted and followed her back over to the now headless body.