The Secret of Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

barricade the door. The black guy tells them to go; he’ll
try, God knows how, to stop the zombies. Julie and young Reynolds don’t have to
be told twice, and go off to another room. At one point in their flight, Julie
looks her boyfriend in the eye and asks him, just with her gaze or maybe with
words, I can’t remember now, how he can still love her. Young Reynolds replies
by kissing her on the cheek, then he wipes his lips and kisses her on the mouth.
I love you, he says, I love you more than ever.
    Then they hear a yell and they know that the black guy is gone.
There’s no way out of the room where they’ve taken refuge; it’s full of old
furniture piled up chaotically, but with passages between; it’s like a labyrinth
of the transient, of things without the will to last. I have to leave you, says
Julie. Young Reynolds doesn’t know what she means. Only when Julie uses her
extraordinary strength to throw him under some armchairs and broken-down washing
machines and faulty or obsolete television sets does he understand that the girl
is prepared to sacrifice herself for him. He hardly has time to react. Julie
goes out and fights and loses and the Mexican zombies are coming for him. With
tears streaming down his face, young Reynolds tries to make himself invisible,
curling up into a ball of flesh under the pile of junk.
    The Mexican zombies, however, find him and try to drag him out of
there. Young Reynolds sees their hungry faces, then the hungry face of the black
guy and Julie’s face, watching him, showing no sign of emotion. At this point,
Colonel Reynolds, escorted by three of his men, kicks down the door and starts
blowing away all the zombies with the special gun. All the time he’s firing, the
colonel is calling his son’s name. Here I am, Dad, says young Reynolds.
    The nightmare is over.
    The next scene shows the colonel comfortably seated in his office
proposing to his son that they go to Alaska for a vacation together. Young
Reynolds says he’ll think it over. There’s no rush, son, says the colonel. Then
the colonel’s on his own and he begins to smile to himself, as if he can’t quite
believe how incredibly lucky he’s been. His son is alive. Meanwhile, young
Reynolds has left his father’s office and started walking through the
underground passageways at the base. There’s a look of deep uneasiness on his
face. Gradually, however, distant noises begin to penetrate his self-absorption.
He can hear shouts and howls, the cries of people for whom pain has become a way
of life. Barely aware of what he’s doing, he starts walking toward the source of
the cries. He doesn’t have to go far. The passage turns a corner and there is a
door; it opens onto an enormous laboratory, stretching away before him.
    He is warmly greeted by some military scientists who have known him
since he was a boy. He continues on his way. He discovers a series of glass
cells. The Mexicans have been placed in them, each in a separate cell. He keeps
walking. He finds Julie’s cell. Julie recognizes him. The colonel’s son puts his
hand on the glass and Julie puts her hand up to his, as if she were touching it.
In a larger cell some scientists are working on the black guy. He could become a
great warrior, they say. They are sending electric shocks through his brain. The
black guy is full of hatred and resentment. He howls. The colonel’s son hides in
a corner. When the scientists go for their coffee break, he gets up and asks the
black guy if he recognizes him. Vaguely, says the black guy. All my memories are
vague. And fucking strange, too.
    We were friends, says the colonel’s son. We met by the river. I
remember an apartment on 30th Street, says the black guy, and a woman laughing,
but I don’t know what I was doing there. The boy frees the black guy from his
chains. Freed, he walks like a kind of robocop. A zombie robocop. Don’t attack
me, says the colonel’s son, I’m your friend. I understand, says the black