Neighborhood Watch by Evan Bollinger Page B

why he did it.”
    The photos of Marissa Clark screamed out in my mind's eye. “He wanted to bring Marissa back.”
    My brother tapped the wall. There was a brick portion adjacent the television with an empty ledge and mantle. It contained a small hearth with fake logs and a picture of moving flames that you could turn on and off.
    Suddenly the wall rotated.
    “Whoa, what in the...” 
    I was over next to him in a second, and as the two of us shared a nervous look, we made the move together. One foot after another, we entered into the secret room of the strange den in Mr. Clark's stranger house.
    The first thing I noticed were the white walls. So white they could have been made of pure snow; so bright and bleeding white that you'd swear the only place they came from was the North Pole. And it was cool, cooler than the rest of the house—as if we had been transported to another place.
    All around in this whiter than white room, there was a fissss . It seemed to come from everywhere, from the ceilings, the floor, the walls and the glow itself. And producing that soft sound, were pods. Or chambers, or perhaps, vessels. They were metallic hulls with a transparent viewing. Like see-through coffins.
    And in each, and every of these coffins, the frozen faces stared outward.
    “Cryopreservation,” I whispered.
    My brother shot me a scared look.
    I passed by each cryochamber, the blood twitching through my young veins, my neck tingling. Each chamber was slightly different. Some had buttons and toggles on the front, others were clean and barren. For each one, the date was engraved.
    “ Specimen B 6/12/1995, Specimen C1 7/23/1997 Specimen A3 1/09/2001 ... 2002, 2005, 2008, 2012 ...”
    “He's been doing this for years,” my brother whispered.
    I peered into the glass of each chamber, into the eyes of each encased being. The skeletal, ghoulish faces stared back. Some of the eyelids were closed, in others, the eyes were open but blank; creatures floating, suspended between life and death. But they were all zombies; all, in seemingly different stages.
    I could see a few in full decay, with the muscle exposed and the flesh disintegrated. There were missing teeth and eyes, decrepit limbs and wiry tangles of decaying hair. That deep, black fluid halted in mid ooze.
    “They look so young...” Mitch was standing before a pair of two smaller chambers, like giant test tubes.
    “Because they are.”
    I stared into the blotchy, white flesh of kids no older than myself. The virus or chemical had yet to affect them harshly, but the progress was obvious. Their nostrils were reddened, and there were spots on their eyes, like little brown fleas. Purple lips, gaunt faces and thinning hair.  Like high school students dying of old age.
    My heart almost froze as I stepped past a pretty girl with blonde hair.
    That is, until I saw the biggest and brightest chamber of them all. It was in the middle of the room, with its own spotlight. I could already see the icy blue eyes piercing through the glass.
    “Mrs. Clark,” I said to Mitch, but he was behind me, investigating something else.
    There was no engraving for this one, no need to. The woman inside was completely naked. Unlike the others, she wasn't filled with decaying flesh or blotches or the early signs of zombification. She looked older, but in a graceful way, as if the years of cancer and chemo had left little mark on her physique.
    “He's been practicing and experimenting on for years,” I thought aloud. “Without a problem...”
    “Until now,” finished my brother. He was standing off to the side, the sawed-off shotgun fully secured in his arms. At his feet, the shattered fragments of a chamber. Whatever had been in there, whatever had been held in that cryogenic stasis, was gone.
    “All this for his wife?” Mitch said. “I hope she was a great lover.”
    For some reason, I was laughing. I didn't know why, didn't even know that I was capable, yet there I was, seizing with fits. I