Dead Man Running Read Online Free Page B

nicked his skin, but there was so much adrenaline in his system that he barely felt it. Got to disarm him, he thought. Without the axe, I could pin him and wait for help.
    And suddenly he knew how to do it. As the man prepared the axe for another swing, Six dug the MRI remote out of his pocket and pushed the green button.
    Behind the man, Six could see the bench sliding into the scanner. He heard the electromagnet hum as it was switched on. The axe blade reacted immediately, jerking back as if possessed –
    â€“ and shearing through the one-eyed man’s neck.
    Six choked in horror as the man’s head tumbled from his shoulders and hit the ground like a punctured soccer ball. The bloodied axe flew across the room and thunked against the MRI scanner as the headless body tipped over backwards, limbs rigid, and hit the ground with a wet smack. Blood squirted from the neck to a precise rhythm, and an ugly chemical stench filled the air.
    I didn’t mean to behead him, Six thought. Only disarm him. Some distant, sick part of his brain laughed at the pun.
    Ace burst through the door, searching for the source of the alarm. Her eyes bulged as she took in the axe stuck to the MRI scanner, the severed head and the dead body in the growing lake of blood.
    â€˜What . . . how . . .?’
    Six pointed at the body. ‘Who is this?’ he demanded.
    Ace’s voice was shaky. ‘I don’t know yet. His autopsy is scheduled for the day after tomorrow – I’ve got a few to do between now and then.’
    Six stared down at the bloodshot eye, now fixed upon the wall. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think he just bought his way to the front of the queue.’

THE LIVING DEAD
    â€˜He died a week ago,’ Ace said. ‘One gunshot wound to the back of the head, another to the heart moments later. That was the conclusion from my preliminary examination, and the autopsy bears it out.’
    â€˜Except that he attacked me two hours ago,’ Six said.
    â€˜I’m not disputing that,’ Ace said. ‘I’m just saying that he wasn’t technically alive when it happened.’
    They were in King’s new office. Six noticed that the old furniture had been discarded in favour of a new couch, a larger desk and a multi-monitor computer set-up. The room was bigger too. Six wondered if King had needed the extra space to fit his new possessions, or if he’d put in the old ones and it had felt too empty.
    â€˜How can a dead man attack somebody?’ King asked.
    â€˜He can’t. It’s impossible.’ Ace folded her hands in her lap. ‘But it is possible for a machine to attack someone, and it turns out that it’s also possible for a machine to use a dead body for spare parts.’
    Six said, ‘So that guy . . . was a robot?’
    Ace winced. ‘Not exactly. Someone surgically removed the remains of his heart and replaced it with this.’ She put a clear plastic box on King’s desk. Inside was a wet grey thing made of valves and screws. As Six watched, a sphere embedded in the side oscillated in and out. ‘Artificial heart,’ Ace said. ‘Still beating – that’s why the body kept bleeding after you decapitated it.’
    â€˜It was an accident,’ Six reminded her.
    â€˜I’ve seen artificial hearts before, but never anything like this. It pumps hard and fast enough to kill a living human, if you were crazy enough to try to put one in. There’s also a timer on it – someone didn’t want the body to wake up until after I’d checked its pulse. I’m guessing our mystery doctor used it to pump out all the blood through the severed arteries. Then he sewed them up and filled the guy’s circulatory system with this.’ She placed a jar of dark red goop beside the heart.
    â€˜What is it?’ King asked, fascinated.
    â€˜A mixture of about a hundred different