Losses made the air grow unbearably hot in the little cabin, but Guy worked woodenly and did not notice. He forced himself to this. The handling of a corpse—for until it showed the sign of life it was a corpse—made Guy's stomach crawl and made his hands feel as though they never would be clean again. Time and again he looked away to keep from screaming aloud.
And when it came time to insert the needle containing superenalin into the body, Guy's fingers went cold and insensitive. The needle did not slide in the way it should, it entered with that dead feeling similar to cutting dead flesh with a dull knife. It sickened him, and after emergence, when the tiny droplet of blood did not come, it brought on that nausea again.
Massage! It was a gruesome thing, this fondling and stroking of cold, stiff limbs. The heat seemed to be doing no good, for Guy could discern no softening of the joints. They creaked and cracked as he moved the arms and legs, and it worried him because he knew the brittleness of frozen flesh. Was he breaking bone and flesh deep within this body?
More—was it worth it?
Guy's mind recoiled and rejected the horror that he felt. This body was no stranger to him. Alive, physical contact would not have been distasteful. Now that it was dead, why did he feel horror?
Alive, it might have fought him because of the liberties he was taking; with no objections to his ministrations possible, why did he feel horror and fear?
It struck Guy as insanely funny and he laughed uproariously. The cabin rocked to the sound of his laughter, and as he stopped, the echo reminded him of the cackle of an idiot. He stopped with indrawn breath, shook his head, and returned to his task.
The body moved perceptibly, and Guy recoiled from the table with the same feeling of horror and fear. This was too much like awakening the dead.
A gasp of indrawn breath came, and the body choked on the volume of air that entered the lungs. Color returned to the cheeks, and the eyes opened, fluttered, and then looked at Guy full and open.
The lips parted.