Chapter 2: The Hand of Fate

Living above a bar had its advantages. From nine p.m. to one a.m., any strange crashes went completely unnoticed and so did any other odd noises. At all other times, there was nobody around to watch Herbert bring in specimens--road kill, mostly, but he was perfecting his live squirrel trap. The NPE theory may have been bunk in its early stages, but he'd make it work. All it took was discipline. Discipline was the key.

Though occasionally--very occasionally--he'd go downstairs for a drink. He found it interesting to observe people engaging in their quaint social interactions, which generally consisted of fairly inebriated men hitting very blatantly on women, who reveled in the attention. Once a woman had talked to him. He'd scared her off pretty quickly, though. Intentionally. Women, for the most part, disgusted him. They were such weak, useless creatures and a constant distraction to less strong-willed men. He prided himself on the fact that he'd never allowed himself to be distracted. There had never been a woman that he cared the least bit about--oh, wait. There had been one. And she'd been a perfect illustration as to why women were little better than a bane. He'd been young and unsuspecting then--too naïve to avoid her feminine snares. He'd been…distracted. And his work had suffered. It hadn't happened again.

Suddenly, a crash and a chorus of yells downstairs startled Herbert. A fight, perhaps? There was usually at least one a week and if there were any serious injuries, the bartender would come pounding up the stairs to ask for his assistance. Herbert paused in his work (admittedly, all he was doing at the moment was taking notes on the state of his carcasses) and listened for a moment. No one knocked on the door, but abruptly it was quite silent below him. Mildly curious, he got up and cracked the door open. Nothing of note happened for about a minute and he was about to go back to his desk, when someone said in an incredulous tone, "That is sick, man. Where the hell did you find it?"

"What is it?" a woman's voice quavered.

Herbert narrowed his eyes a little and stepped quietly out onto the landing, where he could hear better and perhaps see what was going on.

It appeared that every patron in the bar was gathered around a burly man with a blond mullet. Most of them were staring at something on the table, which was obscured from Herbert's view. "It was just sitting on the porch," Burly Redneck said. "I thought it was awesome. Like, maybe a movie prop or something."

"That doesn't look like a prop to me. It's moving."

"Yeah, well, y'know, those movie people can do some fancy shit."

A collective scream suddenly went up ad everyone leapt away from the table. "Jesus Christ, Bob, your fuckin' hand just jumped at me!"

Hand? Herbert's eyes narrowed even further and he took another step forward.

"Hey, where's it going?"

"Catch it! It's headed up the stairs!"

Herbert saw it then. He blanched. And then he muttered, "Shit."

Swiftly looking around for anything that could be used as a weapon and finding nothing, he took several steps back into the shadows and waited for the little abomination to crest the top of the last step. Slowly, a finger reached over and felt around. Judging the area safe, the rest of the hand followed, and it scurried forward a couple of inches before stopping and surveying its surroundings again. In a moment, it continued creeping forward and Herbert prepared himself for attack. A couple more inches…yes…almost…

He raised his foot, brought it down as hard as he could on the hand, and was rewarded with the satisfying crunch of bones splintering. For good measure, he ground the severed appendage under his heel, taking no heed of the thick blood oozing out from beneath his shoe.

Just then, Bob the Burly Redneck appeared at the top of the stairs, flanked by curious onlookers. He cast his eyes over the dark landing until they settled on Herbert. "You see anything weird come up here, man?"

Herbert raised his eyebrows in an attempt at polite bafflement. "Weird? No, I'm afraid not. Just a spider, which has been dispatched from this plane of existence."

The bar patrons eyed him suspiciously. "Nothing?" one of them questioned. "Bob here found a…well, he had this hand that was…like…alive."

Herbert pursed his lips thoughtfully. "No, I certainly would have noticed that."

"Yeah, I s'pose you would've." Bob looked crestfallen. "Damn, that sucks."

"Maybe it didn't come up here," one of his buddies said supportively as they turned and descended the stairs.

Herbert watched them go before he removed his foot from the crushed hand and scraped the gore from his shoe as best he could. For a long moment, he just stood there studying the mess and he came to the conclusion, quickly, that there was no way he'd hallucinated the episode. That was most definitely a severed human hand that was currently plastered to the floor outside his room and to the bottom of his only pair of casual loafers.

He grabbed a rag from his room and cleaned up the remains as best he could (since, even smashed, there was still no doubt what it was), then unceremoniously dropped it in the garbage and sat down at his desk.

So. They were after him. A couple thousand miles was no deterrent to the dead, apparently. Herbert knew he could dismiss it as an isolated occurrence, but that would be foolish. That was the path to waking up one night surrounded by slathering zombies. The question was, when would they arrive, and how would he deal with it?

Herbert stared broodingly out the window for a minute. Well. He'd deal with that when the time came. Right now he had to catch up on his research.