Martin chuckled. “Ma and I thought this might happen sooner or later and decided to make a few home improvements. That glass you’re looking at is the same they put on those high-profile cars and whatnot. Might take me a while to shoot them all from upstairs, but we’ll clean them up. Stay inside and you’ll be alright.”
Martin paused on his way up the stairs. “Where’s that fiancé of yours?”
“Sleeping still. He doesn’t get up till at least ten, despite what I say.”
“Well, I reckon he’ll be up once I start shooting. Nice boy like him might even want to help.”
“Where’s Ma?” Clarice asked, concerned for her safety and still wanting to meet her.
“Oh, she’s around,” Martin replied with a shrug as he continued up to the second floor. “If she ain’t in here right now, she’s probably holed up in the gas station. Guess I should call over there and check.”
Ryan shuffled over and gazed out the window alongside Clarice. He didn’t say anything at first, but let a smidge of drool run from the corner of his mouth down to the floor. “I’ve met that one before,” he finally said as he motioned toward the leading corpse. “I think I’ll see what he has to say. Maybe he’s come to make payment arrangements.”
“What?” Clarice exclaimed. “Are you insane?”
“Determined,” Ryan clarified.
Before Clarice could even think of intervening, Ryan left the house and staggered out to meet the new visitors. She kept close to the still narrowly open door, one hand on the doorknob and the other gripping the deadbolt.
Clarice watched Ryan stop in front of the two zombies who were now a few dozen paces from the house. As far as the secretary could tell, the three stood with little interaction other than the occasional twitch of hand or head. That is until Ryan spotted his 1941, catalog product number 31A, green metallic shell, ballpoint pen wedged under one of the zombie’s collar bone and snatched it from him.
The zombie lunged, Martin shot, and Clarice yelled. The end result of all three’s interaction was the walking corpse toppling over backward, Nick yelling something from upstairs, and Ryan managing to get back inside before Clarice slammed and bolted the door shut.
A second scream leaped from the secretary’s mouth as the other zombie slammed into the door. It was crusty, mostly toothless, with long black hair and yellow skin. A part of it looked female, but whatever it was, it tried time and again to smash its way into the house. Much to Clarice’s relief and a credit to Martin’s handiwork, the windows and doors held.
Soon more and more zombies gathered, all lending their weight to bringing down the door, and more and more shots rang out from upstairs. The shots were joined by another set, a second shooter, who Clarice could only assume was Nick.
Clarice watched for a while as the ghastly beings battered the house. When Martin called out from upstairs, Clarice turned her attention to the road where a pair of flower delivery vans had pulled in. A half dozen men that looked like black turtles with guns jumped out and formed a skirmish line. Right behind them was a lanky man in a lab coat, shouting with excitement. She could hear them and Martin yelling at each other, the gist of which she didn’t quite understand.
“Miss!” Martin called from upstairs. “You and Mr. Conner ought to get up here, just in case.”
“Come again?” she yelled, looking back up the staircase.
“Those windows and boards are strong enough now, but I wouldn’t trust them completely,” he explained. “Might catch a stray bullet if you stay.”
Clarice turned around and grabbed her boss by the collar once she saw the newcomers making a tactical advance on the house, submachine guns shouldered and ready. She had scarcely managed to get up the stairwell when the popping sounds began.
Three minutes later the gunfire slowed to the occasional shot here and there. Three minutes after that, it had ceased altogether.
Chapter Eleven
The final location of the Tau Seven Facility had been painstakingly researched. Designers realized it had to be placed where there were no hidden bones, shiny rocks, or anything else that might attract the would-be digger. Thankfully, finding such a worthless area in the Appalachian Mountains did not take long. Once the land was purchased and several dinky shacks added for camouflage, long, intricate tunnels were dug into the mountain and then filled with rooms, laboratories, equipment, elevators, and people.
But to the dismay of all the staff, Tau Seven had been without biological subjects for nearly seven years, and many of their projects had been put on hold. However, when six new guests were admitted to the facility, all of that changed and long-dormant work resumed.
* * *
Mark Hoffer stood quietly in one of Tau Seven’s observation rooms, arms crossed and foot idly tapping. Next to him stood an excited Dr. John Forbes, who had entered the room moments ago. The man seemed always to be whistling something when not speaking, though at the moment he had paused in his Disney theme songs to peruse the chart he was carrying. The doctor’s fingers twitched almost nonstop, as if attached to a marionette that had had enough and was struggling to get free. After a few minutes, the invisible puppet ceased its pulling, and Dr. Forbes looked up to face Mark.
“This is one of the nicer observation rooms I think,” the doctor said, scratching his Brillo pad beard and adjusting his wireframe glasses. “I like the color in this one the most.”
“I see,” Mark said flatly, taking a survey of the room. It was well lit, though bare of any sort of equipment or decoration, save a row of chairs that faced a thick pane of glass and a number of large, bundled wires that ran across the ceiling. The room’s decor did little to distract occupants from the fact that they were under countless tons of rock and concrete, and Mark wondered how long it would take for workers to go insane from the environment. “How long have you been down here, doctor?”
“A few years. Three I think, come next month. We don’t get out much. Why do you ask?”
“Idle curiosity,” Mark replied, making a small mental note to leave as soon as he could. “Shall we get started?”
“We shall!” Dr. Forbes took a few light steps and flipped a switch on the wall. The detention room on the other side of the glass brightened. In the middle stood Jack, who had made no noticeable reaction to the change in lighting and was slowly turning in circles.
“It’s been two days now since we picked them all up,” the doctor said while flipping his chart pages. “And we’ve learned quite a lot about the survivors you managed to bring back, this one especially. It’s been so long since we’ve had an animated subject to study. I can’t tell you how excited we all are at the prospects of new research. Subject Four here is quite the lucky little thing if I might add. It seems that he took a shot to the head from the elderly fellow’s rifle and didn’t die.”
“Bad aim?” Mark squinted, trying to pick out the zombie’s head wound from afar.
“Bad luck,” Dr. Forbes clarified. “Or bad physics, depending on who you want to blame. The round hit this one on the outside cheekbone and deflected. What energy the bullet did impart on the zombie’s head seems to have all been captured by the bit of bone that broke off. Never even as much as wiggled what’s left of his brain.”
“Lucky S.O.B.” Mark cupped his hands over his eyes as he peered into the room. “What’s that he’s wearing?”
“Part of an old M42 jumpsuit we think,” Dr. Forbes replied. “We tried looking for his name, but as you can see, the fabric has deteriorated. Definitely World War II origins, though.”
Mark turned back toward Dr. Forbes, eager to hear what other progress they had made. Coming up with a timeline for these creatures was important, and if the team had pinpointed this one to World War II, it showed remarkable resilience and self-reliance in terms of survival. “What else do you know about him?”
“We know with total certainty that this one hates parfaits.” Dr. Forbes tapped the chart a couple of times, emphasizing the point.
“Parfaits?”
“Yes, parfaits. They’re a dessert, mind you, generally custard or ice cream, and often have fruit along with whipped cream.”
“I know what a parfait is,” Mark replied, trying not to be offended. “Care to explain to me how you know this? Or even better, why?”
“Have you seen that donkey movie?” the doctor asked. “The one where he’s got a big oaf for a friend? No matter. In it, the donkey claims that everyone likes parfaits. Not some people, or most, but everyone. I’d like to take the credit on this one, but it was really our senior chemist’s idea to give it a try, even if it started out as a bit of a joke. Gaston decided to test the donkey’s claims, and being a good cook and all, he personally made a parfait.”
“And?” Mark said, almost too afraid to ask.
“And this particular corpse does not like parfaits. You might even say he hates them,” the doctor replied. He then pointed to a particular point on a particular page. “As you can see, he hurled the parfait quite far with considerable force. Our statistician says it’s more likely that an elephant would be in your bathroom with a cup of tea than for this guy to like parfaits. The numbers are quite convincing.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. As irrelevant as all of this seemed, he was impressed by the number-crunching that had been recorded. He held back his skepticism and decided to indulge his curiosity more. Perhaps it would yield something both exciting and of substantial value. “Forgive my ignorance on the matter,” he said, “but I don’t understand what this tells us aside from perhaps his culinary preferences.”
“Well, it doesn’t tell us anything directly, except what he does not like to eat as you have so pointed out,” Dr. Forbes admitted. “But I suspect it will go a long way as to understanding zombie motives. Not only zombie motives, mind you, but perhaps it will even be the key to unraveling the mystery of their entire existence.”
“All from a parfait,” Mark replied.
“Not the parfait, but the motives behind hating a parfait,” the doctor clarified. He then attempted to shed a little more light on his team’s thinking. “Let me take a broad approach, and maybe that will help you understand. We know that this fellow right here is dead, right? Or at least, should be.”
“Right,” Mark replied. His muscles relaxed at the thought of some real progress. The last thing he needed was to explain to his superiors why he was wasting taxpayer dollars on discerning the various velocities of zombie-launched desserts.
“So the most elementary and basic question is ‘Why isn’t this fellow dead?’”
“Right.” His spirits lifted, and for the brief moment, he entertained the idea that Dr. Forbes already had the answer to that particular question. But before Dr. Forbes went on, Mark forced himself to scale back his excitement. He knew that such an answer was probably a long way off. Still, it never hurt to dream. Or ask. “And you have this answer?”
“Not quite,” Dr. Forbes chuckled. “But we’re working on it. Follow me on this for a moment. Now then, when normal people die, they stay dead. We don’t see any of this walking around nonsense, and we don’t see them trying to eat anyone either. Death is a state that is, for all intents and purposes, permanent. So as you can see, it’s only a matter of digging into the psyche of things for us to understand why these not-so-dead people don’t want to stay dead. What is it they want? Why are they not content to lie down for all eternity like everyone else?”
“That’s it?” Mark asked in disbelief, his excitement crashing down like a whale dropping from thirty thousand feet.
“Well, that’s the bare-bones version, yes,” the doctor replied. He then added, “But do keep in mind that is an incredibly simplified version of what we have. It does include all sorts of little things like bacteria versus viruses and whatnot. But in truth, that’s only one theory. We have a second, not quite as popular one, that we must also consider as well.”
“Which is?”
“Well,” he said, taking a seat and watching Jack spin some more. “What if examining what drives a zombie isn’t the answer? What if their motives are inconsequential?”
“I would suspect otherwise,” Mark said. “I’ve got to be honest, I’m having a hard time with what you said, and I think my superiors will, too.”
Dr. Forbes nodded understandingly. “Fear not, I’m thorough in my work, and I’ll be sure that what we have in the end is a solid understanding. I don’t doubt everyone will be happy once we’ve had a little more time to flesh out our studies.”
“Good,” Mark replied. “And this second theory is?”
“We have to consider that the ground somehow is rejecting them,” the doctor replied. “Not only the ground, but theoretically the sea as well—all of creation if you will, borrowing a bit of religious talk. What if these poor souls want simply to lie down forever, but the Earth is rejecting them for some reason? I think that would make anyone irate, wouldn’t you? Who doesn’t get cranky when they’re tired? Now imagine how cranky you would be if no one let you sleep for years on end.”
Mark sighed and shook his head. He could see his promotion slipping away. “What about the others we brought back? What’s going on with them?”
“Quite a bit,” Dr. Forbes said, motioning for him to follow out of the room. “They are each down the hall.”
The two entered the next room, and like its predecessor, it was bare, gray and contained only a few chairs, all facing another detention room. Mark, against every fiber in his body, silently admitted that the previous room was indeed nicer.
“So, what do you think so far?” Dr. Forbes asked.
“I’m not sure I know just yet. What’s that smell?” Mark asked, looking around. “It smells like lima beans.”
“Oh, that,” Dr. Forbes said as he pointed to the stucco ceiling. “There’s a small leak in the vents. That smell is part of the gas we pump into their rooms as a method for suppressing infections. Perfectly harmless.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound very harmless.”
“I assure you it is,” Dr. Forbes said, taking a few steps to flip another switch. “Now, this fellow is peculiar. He’s a tax collector by the name of Ryan Conner.”
The room brightened, and on the other side of the glass Mark saw Ryan seated in an orange plastic chair which was drawn to a brown folding table. The tax collector, seemingly oblivious to everything, doodled on a handful of papers.
“This is the infected one we found with the others, right?” Mark asked.
“We believe so,” the doctor replied. “But according to his secretary and her fiancé, he was bitten some time ago, which is one of many odd little things about him. If their timeline is correct, then this poor chap should have succumbed to the infection by now.”
“Anything notable about his life or past we should be aware of? Ancestry, maybe?” Mark asked. “Something that might give him some immunity to it?”
“Nothing particular stands out in his medical history,” Dr. Forbes admitted, checking it over one more time on his PDA. “But we’re going to have to be thorough with this subject to make a definitive statement in any direction. He does seem to have an impressive record as a tax collector. It’s too bad they don’t have medals for that. I’m sure his father would have been proud if they did.”
“Why is that?”
“Seems that his father served in World War II,” the doctor replied. “We believe that’s where the pen we found on him came from.”
“Pen?” Mark turned his attention away from Ryan for the moment and faced Dr. Forbes. Though he ultimately doubted it, a part of him was excited at the possibility that the pen might be a spy gadget of some sort.
“An excellent specimen of a 1941, catalog product number 31A, green metallic shell, ballpoint pen,” Dr. Forbes specified. “Did you know it was reported to have almost eight hundred uses?”
“I had no idea.” Mark was genuinely impressed. Certainly, he had heard of multifunctional pens before but had no idea that that many us
es could be crammed into something that small. “That must be some pen, indeed. Was it for espionage, by chance?”
“No, just a commercial design. But the eight hundred uses is an unverified claim as far as we’re concerned. We have it down in another lab for testing.” Dr. Forbes rustled through the chart. “I’m not sure if the biologists or chemists will get the first crack at it. We could swing by if you like.”
“That’s okay,” Mark answered, disappointed at the lack of spy gadgetry on the writing device. “If it’s so plain, what are you testing it for?”
“There’s some residue on it that we want to look into,” Dr. Forbes answered. “But we haven’t done anything substantial with the pen yet. For now, it’s been put in a secure container until we have a concrete idea of what we want to do with it.”
“I see. So getting back to the tax collector, no ideas at all why he hasn’t died—err, changed?” Mark leaned forward, rested his head on the glass, and tried to get a better view of what Ryan was gripping in his left hand. “What is that?” he finally asked.
“We don’t quite know why he’s still somewhat alive, and I hesitate to offer anything since it’s all speculation at this point. As to your other question, he’s holding a stamp.”
“A stamp,” Mark repeated.
“A smiley face stamp to be specific.”
“Because?”
“Because we did not have any other stamp available that he could have,” Dr. Forbes answered flatly and taking a seat. “We did have a spare ‘Top Secret’ stamp available at first, but fortunately someone pointed out that there was a potential danger in giving him that one. Could you imagine the chaos if something was suddenly marked classified that should not be?”
Mark rubbed his eyes. Given all that had been said thus far during the debriefing, he was confident his mental health was in jeopardy should he stay down here any longer. He wasn’t sure that damage hadn’t already been done either. Praying he would not hate himself for asking, Mark pressed the issue. “I still don’t understand why he has a stamp at all.”
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