by Joe McKinney
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi, yourself.”
“You’re that reporter, ain’t ya?”
“Sure am. Ben Richardson. You’re Christy, right?”
“Very good,” she said, giving him a playful slap on the shoulder.
“Uh, Christy?” said Michael. There was an unpleasant look on his face, like he’d just tasted something sour.
Her smile slipped a little. “Yeah, yeah,” she said to Michael. “In a minute.”
Then the smile reappeared. She leaned closer to Richardson and said, “That witch Dr. Carnes wants me to change before we get to the Alamo.”
She smelled very nice, Richardson noticed.
“I think this looks fine. Don’t you?” Christy said, clasping her hands together behind her back and turning her shoulders this way and that, her pert little tits pointed right at him.
Richardson felt the heat spread all the way to the tops of his ears.
“I think you look nice,” he said. “But you should probably wear something with a little more coverage. You don’t want to risk getting scratched, or bit.”
“I want to be a reporter too,” she said.
He blinked at her. “You do?”
“Mm hmm. I’m the only freshman on the school paper. That’s why I’m here. I’m writing an article on these people for the paper.”
“You’re a freshman, huh?”
“Mm hmm, but they call us First Years these days. I turned eighteen last month.”
Oh Jesus, Richardson thought.
“Uh, Christy?” Michael said, tugging at her wrist now.
“What?”
He shrank back from the look she gave him. “Nothing,” he said.
Richardson said, “How ’bout you, Michael? Why are you here?”
“I... well, I....”
“He’s just here to protect me,” said Christy. “You know how boys are.”
Michael looked out the window, sullen-faced.
“So, you’re a journalism major?”
Richardson winced inwardly. Christ, he thought, did I really just ask her major?
“Is that what you did, Mr. Richardson?”
He did a double-take at the mention of his name. The way she said it, she might as well have been calling Daddy.
“Communications,” he said, wondering if anybody else but him had picked up on the hitch in his voice. Through the window on the other side of the bus, he could see a small crowd of zombies shambling toward the bus and he tried to get himself back in his mental zone. Enough with the Lolita.
“So tell me, Christy. What’s your opinion of what these people are doing?”
“You mean Dr. Carnes?”
“And the rest of them.”
“Well, my editor on the paper says we ain’t supposed to write our opinions. He says he only wants objective reporting.”
“He said that?”
“Mm hmm.”
“Christy, I got news for you. Your editor’s an idiot. There’s no such thing as objectivity in journalism. Opinions are the only things that count, and if you don’t have an opinion, you don’t have a story.”
“I think they ought to send in the Marines and blow ’em all away,” Michael said.
Christy, annoyed, said, “Michael, shush, ’fore somebody hears you.” To Richardson, she said, “What about you, Mr. Richardson? What do you think about what’s going on here?”
Richardson smiled. Turn the question back on the one asking it. The girl’s got good instincts.
“I think it’s a really bad idea bringing a bunch of unarmed college kids into a city that’s been overrun by zombies, abandoned by the survivors, and quarantined by the U.S. military.”
“But Dr. Carnes has a court order allowing her to be here.”
“True. But just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean you should.”
“Are you saying this is a moral issue?”
“Not at all. I’m saying it’s a common-sense issue.”
“But you’re here.”
“I’m paid to be here, Christy.”
The girl shrugged, and suddenly, she was a bouncy teeny-bopper again. It wasn’t until she started speaking again that Richardson realized the ditzy school girl routine was an act. All she’d done was bat her eyelashes and stick out her tits, and she’d managed to make him put his cards on the table. She was good. With a few more years’ experience under her belt, no man in the world would be able to tell she was intentionally putting them off their guard.
“Well, I think she’s doing a good thing,” Christy said. “After all, those zombies out there ain’t dead. They’re just sick, same as if they had AIDS or malaria or the flu.”
“Apples to oranges,” Richardson said. “The necrosis filovirus, what turns those people out there into zombies, is the worst form of viral hemorrhagic fever ever encountered. Researchers wear space suits to handle samples of it. Those zombies out there aren’t dead, like you say, but they’re pretty damn near untouchable.”
“Dr. Carnes says she wants to show people their fear is in the wrong place. She says if people see that unarmed people can walk around safely with those zombies that maybe the government will finally agree to come down here and help ’em.”
“I seriously doubt that’s gonna happen.”
“Uh, Christy?” Michael again. “Don’t you think you ought to get dressed, sweetie?”
Christy gave him one of her hard stares, but softened quickly. “Oh, all right.” To Richardson, she said, “Will you excuse me, please?” And then in a whisper, with a wink, “I need to go change.”
“Of course.”
Her eyes sparkled, big and brown. “It was nice talkin’ with you, Mr. Richardson.”
“You too, Christy.”
She walked to the back of the bus, to the bathroom, and Richardson resisted the urge to turn around and watch her can wiggle under that short skirt.
Michael got up, took down Christy’s pink suitcase from the overhead bin, and shot Richardson a dirty look before he took it back to her.
The bathroom was only six seats back, and Richardson could hear them talking.
Michael said, “Christy, why do you always gotta treat me like that?”
“Treat you like what?”
“Like I’m dumb.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Michael. Just give me my damn bag.”
A pause.
“Christy?”
“What?”
“You ain’t really sweet on that old dude, are you?”
Richardson didn’t get to hear the answer. He felt the bus slow and then lurch as it came to a stop.
An excited flurry of voices rose from the front.
Richardson craned his neck to see. From the looks of it, zombies were blocking the road. Hundreds of them. A moment later, they were pounding on the sides of the bus with their palms, their moans sounding like water moving through old pipes.
The bus started to rock, and Richardson could see flashes of fear on the faces around him.
He got up and started toward the front.
Dr. Carnes was already there, leaning over the driver’s shoulder.
Richardson heard her say, “Drive forward. Slowly now. Not fast enough to hurt them. Just push them out of the way.”
The bus, which had been fitted with a sort of cattle guard, lurched forward in low gear. Richardson caught himself from falling over by grabbing the tops of the seats on either side of him. He watched in rapt fascination as the bus parted the crowd.
Carnes turned around and faced the rest of the group. “It’s okay, everybody. We’re through. Everybody take your seats please. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
§
While they drove the last few miles into downtown, Richardson thought about how he’d write the back story, how San Antonio got to this point, zombies everywhere.
There was the obvious approach. Start with the hurricanes, five of them slamming into the Texas Gulf Coast in the span of thr
ee weeks, the city of Houston under twenty feet of water, the necrosis virus growing out of the nasty conditions there and spreading over the Gulf Coast.
He didn’t like that though. It’d been done to death already, the news showing it every damn night. What he needed, he decided, was to focus on the quarantine, the military blockade around San Antonio and the other affected areas. That was where the real story was, the reason Carnes and her troop of college-campus liberals took a bus ride into this abandoned ruin that had once been the nation’s seventh largest city, almost two million people.
He wondered again about Carnes, and decided the one unassailable fact about her was the strength of her convictions. She honestly believed that the zombies shambling along outside the bus deserved better than to be barricaded inside a shell of a city and forgotten. Richardson hadn’t made up his mind on that. It was true they were alive, not like the reanimated corpses of a Romero movie, but their minds had been chewed to a honeycomb by the necrosis filovirus and their physical features distorted by rot. The only thing left intact was their ferocious capacity for aggression. They wouldn’t hesitate to cannibalize an uninfected person, and they wouldn’t ever show mercy or pity. But was that really a reason to kill ’em all, as Christy’s boyfriend had suggested? Science might one day find a cure for them.
Richardson suspected that the judge who signed the court order allowing Carnes and her group to cross the barricade line must have felt equally conflicted.
The bus pulled in front of the Alamo, next to a big L-shaped memorial engraved with the names of the people who died inside fighting the Mexican army of General Santa Anna, and Richardson put his questions on the back burner. He looked around, getting his bearings. They’d stopped on North Alamo Street, a once-beautiful section of downtown that had been lavishly restored, paved with gray cobbled stone and trimmed with red brick, but was now crowded with the blackened skeletons of burned-out cars and thick with dust and garbage, weeds growing through cracks in the pavement. There was a broad, grassy, rectangular plaza between them and the famous façade of the old Spanish mission, and tall stone walls the same color as the street zigzagging off at odd angles on either side. Vegetation was everywhere, oak and mulberry and palm and bougainvillea and a spray of pink crepe myrtle blossoms, all growing wild, curling over the walls like green waves.
Beyond the Alamo was the Crockett Hotel. Next to that was the Menger Hotel, where Teddy Roosevelt recruited his Rough Riders. Before the outbreak, it was said to be the most haunted hotel in the United States. Opposite the Alamo, on Richardson’s left, was the Gibbs Building, a six-story Gothic-looking structure that had evidently been gutted by fire during the outbreak.
There were no birds, no squirrels, no cats or stray dogs. The only thing moving was a single zombie, a fat, dark-skinned Hispanic man missing part of his left arm and part of the left side of his face. He walked with a limp, cutting a crooked line across the grassy plaza, not really coming at the bus, but headed in that general direction.
Christy and Michael returned to their seats, Christy now in tight, faded jeans and a little green half shirt over her camisole, tied in the front, the knot between her tits, the whole thing drawing Richardson’s eye to the deep curve between her breasts.
Michael dropped into his seat, still sullen. Christy caught Richardson looking at her chest and gave him a look that was both girlishly innocent and at the same time openly seductive.
Richardson looked away, his mouth dry.
At the front of the bus, Carnes took up the PA and started organizing the group. She’d told Richardson what to expect, and she didn’t waste any time putting her plan into action.
The door opened and several students followed her out. They removed a few folding picnic tables from the cargo bins on the outside of the bus and carried them over to the cobbled walkway in front of the Alamo. They set up tables, returned to the bus, got baskets of food, and laid everything out, buffet-style. It looked to Richardson like spiral-sliced ham, dinner rolls, apples, pears, and processed American cheese in huge, orange, one-pound loaves.
Richardson watched the zombie as it moved through the plaza, anxious to see what would happen.
Nothing did.
The zombie seemed unaware of their presence, even as the students, under the watchful eyes of Dr. Carnes, stood not twenty feet from him.
The zombie continued on, crossed Alamo Street, then disappeared between two buildings and down a narrow alley.
When Carnes got back on the bus, she said, “Okay, everybody, this is the moment of truth. What we do here will go a long way toward getting these people the help they need. I want each of you to keep your eyes open. Make sure you wear your surgical gloves at all times. I don’t want you to be afraid, but I do want you to be extremely careful. And remember to get plenty of pictures.”
With that, Carnes told the bus driver to lay on the horn. He gave it five long blasts, stopped, paused for about thirty seconds, then gave it another five long blasts. Everybody on the bus was quiet, waiting, watching the streets that led into the plaza.
Christy reached across the aisle and touched the back of Richardson’s hand. “This is so exciting, don’t you think?”
Her smile reminded him of sunshine.
Somebody gasped. “Here they come. Over there.”
Everyone moved to see. At first there were only a few stragglers, a few human train wrecks that limped painfully and blindly toward the unfamiliar sound.
“Moment of truth is right,” Richardson murmured.
Christy swept a curtain of brown hair off her shoulder with a casual turn of her head. She smiled at him again.
Then, gradually, the plaza filled with zombies.
“Uh, Christy?” Michael looked from the window to his girlfriend. “Sweetie, are you sure you wanna do this?”
“Shush.”
A few zombies approached the table, handled the food, and like babies, experimented with it by putting it in their mouths. The first ones to taste the food dove on the tables, knocking them over and spreading the food on the ground, and the resulting racket attracted the others. They swarmed the table like a football team on a loose fumble.
Richardson heard Michael echo his own thoughts. “Uh, Christy, I think this is a really stupid idea.”
“Be quiet,” she snapped.
“Christy, come on. Look at them.”
“I mean it, Michael. Be quiet.”
Michael watched the zombies eat, a snarl of disgust at the corner of his mouth. “Christy, please—”
“Don’t,” she said pointing a finger in his face. “Don’t. You don’t wanna come, don’t come.”
Michael looked at her, then past her, to Richardson, his thoughts playing out on his face. If I don’t go with her, the old dude will. It seemed enough of a threat to calm his nerves.
They began off-loading the bus, Carnes on the PA, reminding them not to make any sudden moves or loud noises. “Stay calm, stay alert, stay safe,” she said.
Richardson went outside and looked around, nose wrinkling from the smell of rotted flesh. Up close he found it hard to believe that these people were alive. He moved away from the bus, slowly, already thinking that this would be the opening scene of his article, the teaser. Lead off with the trembling sensation he felt all the way down to his toes. He stayed on the sharp edge of fear for several minutes, but by degrees relaxed. Looking around, he saw the others experiencing the same growing confidence he felt. They smiled at one another as they mingled with the zombies.
Carnes, her voice a forceful whisper, said, “Cameras out, everybody. Lots of pictures.”
Richardson had brought his own camera, and he began snapping pictures. It was a weird, subdued scene, the low moaning of the zombies punctuated by the rapid clicking of twenty cameras. He positioned himself with his back to the bus, the Alamo’s façade about a hundred feet away, the zombies feeding near the toppled picnic tables in the space between.
Christy appeared in front of him.
/> “Will you take my picture, Mr. Richardson?” she said, the look in her eye reminding him of Marilyn Monroe saying “Happy birthday, Mr. President.”
She cocked one hip and folded her arms under her tits, pushing them up without making it obvious that’s what she was doing.
He couldn’t quite keep the smile from his face, and he was just about to take her picture when he heard one of the college kids, a thin, mop-haired boy with a scraggly goatee and KILL YOUR TELEVISION printed on his black T-shirt, scream.
A heavyset zombie female, maybe Hispanic, maybe black, though Richardson wasn’t quite sure because the necrosis filovirus had blackened her skin to the color of charcoal, was clawing at the boy clumsily, and the boy was panicking.
“No,” said Carnes, her voice still that same forceful whisper. “Zach, no. Use your hands. Push her to the tables with the others.”
Zach was obviously terrified, but he did like he was told. He pushed the zombie’s hands to one side, got behind her, and gently, but firmly, pushed her to the table.
“That’s it,” Carnes said. “Good, Zach.”
To Richardson’s amazement, the zombie didn’t turn and try to fight. Once at the table, it fell in with the others, Zach forgotten.
“Okay, Zach,” said Carnes, “step back. Let her go.”
Zach did, and a giddy relief spread through the group.
To himself, Richardson said, “Huh, look at that.”
§
Christy was in front of him again. She asked if he knew yet what he was going to write and then didn’t give him a chance to answer.
“It looks like it’s working, don’t you think?”
“Well, nobody’s been eaten yet,” said Richardson. “I suppose that’s something.”
“You’re not impressed by this? I mean, look at ’em. They’re eating the food Dr. Carnes put out for ’em. They’re not attacking anybody.”
“That’s true.”
Christy swept a wave of brown hair off her face, her expression troubled.
“So why don’t you think it’s working?”
“I think it’s too early to tell.”
“What, exactly, do you need to see before you’ll be convinced?” said Dr. Carnes, who’d been standing behind Richardson but was walking right at him now.