Palpating the base of Flix’s skull, he found the channel where the main nerve bundles resided. Tracing the line down, he came to the nape of Flix’s neck, and found it abnormally stiff, as if it were a slab of steel instead of flesh, blood, meningeal fluid, and articulated bone. This partial paralysis was not unfamiliar to him. Preach had made him run his fingertips up and down the neck of a member of his “parish” who he had zombified to keep him alive after a horrendous accident. Whitman should have been reassured that he was on the right track, but Flix’s paralysis was much worse.

Well, there was no help for it but to press on.

With his fingertips at the base of Flix’s skull, he said very softly to Charlie, “Take his hand. Now.”

Charlie did as he asked, and he began. There were twelve cranial nerves. The one Whitman needed to get to was the trigeminal. As its name implied, it was divided into three branches. The problem, again, was the paralytic that was a part of the injection given to Flix, in effect making the nape of his neck armor-plated. The only recourse was to try and access the vagus nerve, which affected the esophagus, chest, and heart. Interrupting the vagus signals would cause brief unconsciousness and thus a lessening of the paralysis. The problem was if Whitman wasn’t careful, if he couldn’t get the vagus functioning in time, Flix would die.

But what choice did he have? With Charlie holding his friend’s hand, he found the vagus, which was far easier to get to, and, as Preach had taught him, interrupted its signals. Immediately, Flix’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped, unconscious, into Whitman’s arms.

“What’s happening?” Charlie cried, alarmed.

“Don’t worry,” Whitman assured her. “Keep hold of his hand. And get those dog tags out of the way.”

With her free hand, Charlie scooped up the pile of dog tags Flix had dropped on the ground.

Whitman’s fingertips searched for Flix’s trigeminal nerve. Seconds ticked by, but he forced himself to slow down, to calmly find his way through the loosened paralysis to the right spot. Flix’s heart had stopped. His breath was stilled. And Whitman’s fingertips were up against what felt like a bar of steel, the last, most powerful defense the poppy alkaloid serum had created to protect itself from being interfered with.

In short, Flix was dying, and Whitman didn’t think there was a damn thing he could do about it.

*   *   *

“Did you kill them?”

Lucy put down her fork. “What?”

“It’s a simple enough question,” White said. “Did you kill the men who raped you?”

“I never saw them again.”