by Nick Mamatas
“Holy fuck!” Thunder said. Two or three more times. “Holy fuck, we nearly died.” My hands were numb. Jaffe’s arm was so cold already. I’d seen a lot of death lately, and a fair amount of posthumous bodily destruction as well, but it was different now. Jaffe was an acquaintance. Someone whose face I knew, who I had drank with, albeit briefly, who had been in my home, albeit under armed guard and only for a moment. Outside of Alexa and Thunder, she was pretty much it since the crisis of reanimations had occurred. And Jaffe was—had been—a great deal saner than any of us. Did our curiosity just damn the city, the last city in America? It is a question I still ask myself silently, but then I asked it aloud.
Alexa said, quietly, “Well, she saw whatever is on the film here, and if it made her want to keep the city going, we should watch it too. It’s a good thing. We need to spread the word.” Thunder yanked the spear plant from Jaffe’s eye and ran it through the handles of the double doors to bar them. I went back to the cabinet. The equipment was old, and simple for it. I found the switch for the projector and the cylindrical phonograph. Thunder hit the lights. Some leader film, hand-drawn it seemed, in an archaic hand, ran, and when it hit 2 I put the needle head onto the cylinder.
“Why did they never make copies of this onto a better format?!”
“By the time they knew what they had, they couldn’t risk copies getting out . . . now shhh!” Thunder said.
On the screen appeared a title card living dead man—1917.
The cylinder crackled and popped, and a distant tiny voice I could just barely hear explained.
“Found in 1906, this man you see before you is not alive. He is dead, yet still ambulatory. He has been preserved through the work of the finest Russian taxidermists and morticians.” The screen still showed the title card as the film and cylinder weren’t synced up. Then the scene shifted to a plain room, and a man in rags walking toward the camera. He was desiccated, nothing but parchment stretched over bone. The film was full of flakes and hair and quick jittering leaps in the frame. The man walked toward the camera, stopped several feet away, turned, and limped off toward the left to the edge of the screen. It was all in long shot, as was the fashion of early silent film.
Another title card long years of struggle, then the shot changed. The man and another fellow, well-dressed this one, with a stiff collar and a three-piece suit, a pencil mustache and a sizeable paunch, made expansive gestures and patted his own diaphragm.
The cylinder, a second or two behind, said, “Aaaaaah!” in a new voice. The reanimate mimicked the man on the screen, and then we heard a higher, more dry, “Aaaaah!”
The narrator explained, “At first, this living dead man knew nothing but rage and anger. He had been embalmed and was being prepared for burial when he sat up from the table on which he was being prepared, and attacked the men who were caring for his final needs. He was beyond communicating with, but psychologist and linguist Doctor Willis Armstrong of the University of California, Berkeley, spent long years of intellectual struggle training the man to speak once more.” On screen, the pair were working through some vocal exercises. It was real footage, in a way. Not contemporary, of course, but also not a recording of an actual training session. The reanimate had been sufficiently tamed to play-act for the camera.
“Jesus,” Alexa muttered.
“A message to the future!” the narrator said. Then a title card came up, reading the same.
“Beware,” said that effete, dry-sounding voice, over the card. Then the card was replaced with another long shot of the dead man. Armstrong, now in a white lab coat, stood on his left, and another man in a lab coat—this one had a thick mustache and sideburns—on the dead man’s right.
“There will be more such as I am.” The scientists nodded solemnly, as though having just told a patient of a terminal cancer diagnosis.
The narrator explained, “Scientists for years have studied the blood and tissues of this man. What causes him to ambulate and cogitate remains unknown—perhaps the embalming procedures have damaged or occulted the bacterium or fungus that causes this remarkable disorder. We only have this man’s testimony, which must be taken with a grain of salt, as so little is known about him. He does not remember his own name, or where he is from. He has mastered language and manners once again, but all he knows from his previous life is that he was once a prospector.”
The dead man stepped forward and opened his mouth again. “I came to San Francisco as a young man. I was party to much sin and wickedness, to privation and moments of joy.” His voice on the cylinder was slow, like poured syrup. “I awoke an old man, a fire burning in my lungs. A fire I had felt but once before, prospecting on the banks of the Feather River years prior. A foul-smelling fog bank settled upon my camp. I believed I had consumption, but the disease passed and I returned to the city proper to live out my days. Now I am naught but disease.”
He stepped backwards into his place. The two scientists also took a step backwards, leaving some space between them and the dead man.
A new title card went up could it be? Then a second one. A disease that affects only the dead?
“We do not know if this disorder is contagious. The man has been under quarantine for onto two decades. The disease may well lie latent in the tissues of the respiratory system until bodily functions cease, only to emerge and infect the muscles and sinews of the body.” We were back to the shot of the dead man and two scientists, but now the fellow with the sideburns had a pistol in his hand. He fired and the film went white. There was more jittering and skipping. Returning to the shot, the reanimate was crumpled into a heap, the top of his head shattered. That was not a pantomime. Having spent years treating the man, teaching him to speak again, and the rudiments of civilization, they snuffed him on film.
“Our brave colleagues have given their lives to investigate this plague. Not only have they spent years working with the subject, they have committed themselves to the care of the city until the end of their natural lives, when they will be immediately dissected for reasons of both medical research and the public safety.”
The shot changed again. It was a sunny day, a tombstone on a hill. Above it, a leafy branch swayed in a long-dead breeze. “Any cemetery, any graveyard,” the narrator said, breathless now, “can become the site of anarchist insurrection if this disorder spreads, if the mysterious fog returns. A public panic must be avoided. Cemeteries must be reinforced to prevent escape, or eliminated entirely and other forms of disposal encouraged among the religious communities of America.”
A new shot, this time Fisherman’s Wharf as it used to be—before the reanimates, before the tourism. Working ships and small fishing boats, panning from left to right. In the distance, Alcatraz, but without the famous concrete prison. Homes, it looked like, or a military garrison of some sort, and a dock. Fog began to roll in, though it was so close to the lens it was likely simply some smoke from a fire lit just off-screen and wafted across the camera’s field of vision by a man with a fan.
“We do not know when the mysterious fog may return. We do not know if it has returned. We only know that we must take every precaution. The armies of the dead outnumber the armies of the living. The death plague must not be allowed to spread, the public must not be allowed to panic!”
A new title card confidential! distribution of this film or its contents by any means is strictly forbidden on special order of the city and county of san francisco.
“From the city fathers, to the people of the future, beware!” There was another, deeper sound after “beware.” It sounded like a repetition of the word, actually, but was too muffled to hear properly. There were no credits, no other title cards. The cylinder continued a muffled monologue for a few extra seconds, but there was nothing intelligible. Then the film was over.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Thunder said. The blood had left her face. She wasn’t raging anymore, just stunned. “That’s all? That’s all there is?”
“I wonder if that fog had
anything to do with the steam vents from the quake the Berkeley people were studying,” Alexa offered. She looked at me, I shrugged.
“They found a reanimate a hundred years ago, trained it back up to humanity, then killed it as part of a government scare film that nobody ever saw. That doesn’t explain anything really—why hasn’t the plague spread to Canada? To Mexico?”
“What makes you think it hasn’t by now?” Alexa said.
“I killed people for this . . . to watch this . . .” Thunder said, to herself.
“It’s like any sort of infestation, like Africanized honeybees. Starts slow, then roars to life in the right circumstances. What’s the etiology of this plague—it actually infects the living, but becomes active after the host dies? Were all the scientists looking in the wrong place somehow? The zombies go on rampages, spread the virus or whatever just by being mobile, and kill people so they get infected too.”
“So we’re infected now?” I wanted to cough, but held it in. “When my grandmother died, I was terrified. I wasn’t even sad for her loss, or sad for my mother—I was just afraid. I knew that one day I’d end up like she was. In a box, in a room somewhere, dressed in clothes I never dressed in normally, people I used to know weeping or standing around with frowns on their faces. I was sad for only one reason—by the time I died, there would be no relatives around who still knew any Greek. All the muttering would be in English . . .”
“This is bullshit, this is a fake movie. Has to be. Right?” Thunder said. She looked at me, as if I’d know.
I shrugged. “Well, we can fake anything with computers, right? But I don’t know, the hardware here is actually harder to synthesize than the actual visual and audio stuff. It looked like authentic Thomas Edison stuff. No plastics. Even the film looks as ratty as an old film would. Maybe that’s why they didn’t make copies on VHS or DVD, or just upload it. Nobody would believe it if they saw it on their computer screens.”
“We should still upload it,” Alexa said. “We can. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t believed, right away.”
“And tell people what—watch out for evil clouds swooping down on you?” Thunder put her head in her big hands and started sobbing.
“That’s even assuming that the reanimate knew what he was talking about. Sounded like a guess, from a certified amnesiac,” I said.
“Still, it’s something. Do we take it?” Alexa said. “Or just head back upstairs, break back down here, and set up a video camera and run the film again, to tape it?”
“And they shot him . . . he could talk, understand, and they shot him anyway . . .” Thunder was on her own now, as divorced from the world as any reanimate.
“So, the city of San Francisco did know something long before anyone else did. And they didn’t tell anyone else because . . .”
“Maybe they did, and nobody believed it,” Alexa said. “Or maybe they did, and there were other forces at work—I mean, what if a cop showed up at your grandma’s funeral with a power drill and a tarp and told you it had to be done. It would raise a lot of religious questions, biological ones . . . and as long as there was only one reanimate, or a few, it could be kept quiet.”
“We should just go for now,” I said. “Let’s get a drink. Talk about it, sleep on it.” Alexa and I were at the door for a long moment, waiting for Thunder to pull herself together. There was a spare set of keys on Jaffe’s corpse, so I retrieved them and told Thunder to come upstairs when she was ready. We stepped outside and waited for the elevator. Of course, it was full of what passed for San Francisco police, pistols drawn. I threw my hands up and started talking immediately, about history, and theories of history. Why did the Soviet Union fall? The Cold War? Markets versus command economy? Gorbachev’s personality? Are you sure, are you sure your guess is the right one? Does it explain everything, does anything explain anything? If markets are so awesome, why is Cuba stuffed with refugees?
One of the cops called me a Communist and slapped me across the face. Alexa had her hands up as well, but she wasn’t talking, so she didn’t eat a backhand. They marched us back into the room, where Thunder had managed to rewind the film. Without a word, she started the projector again, and put the needle back on the cylinder. Jaffe’s corpse, and the huge gouge that used to be her face, went unremarked upon. The cops had heard rumors of what went on down in the sub-basement, but apparently had never seen the film themselves. One of them even took a seat.
After the film was over, the police moved into action. There was none of our hemming and hawing; of course the film would be copied and uploaded to the Internet. Two officers were dispatched to get an old camcorder, and a DVD player, and a laptop, and every cable they could find since some of them would likely come in handy.
Finally, one leveled a firearm right at Thunder’s head and said, “What happened here?” He shrugged his shoulder toward Jaffe.
“She was dead when she came down here,” she said, and the blood was black enough that the story stuck.
“How’d you get down here?”
“We found the keys,” she said plainly. “From that woman who worked here. The white woman—she was the one who died and reanimated out in the agora before. They had fallen out of her pocket or something, and when we evacuated the park I saw them and grabbed them.”
“So how did Mayor Jaffe die then?”
“I dunno, bad tin of sardines? We were running from chaos outside, trying to find a safe place, and ended up down here. She cornered us, so we had to end her. Luckily, both my friends here are certified drillers.”
“I’m actually a record-holder,” I explained. “I’ve drilled more than anyone. I just don’t quit.”
In the cop’s face, I read Jaffe’s story. She wasn’t a great leader, not someone who inspired people. She was just a quiet, competent person who took responsibility for her own job, and when another job opened up, she was promoted. Then one day, after the zombies came, there was nobody left to promote her, so she promoted herself. She knew to keep a low profile, and didn’t position herself as a warlord and thus a lightning rod for a world of troubles and conflict. She just did what she did, using her common sense and taking the conservative path. She showed the movie to people she knew wouldn’t be freaked out by it, and kept its distribution limited for the simple reason that most people would freak out instantly.
But why share it at all? How did she get to see it herself, the first time? City governments don’t have classified files, they just bury things so deeply under paperwork and nonsense that nobody can be bothered to reach them. But Jaffe did—probably after the reanimations began. And she maybe knew the extent of what was coming before others did, and decided to lay low while the mayor and the city supervisors got themselves killed. Then she helped herself to a slightly bigger chair in a slightly bigger office, in the good part of the bad part of town. Clever, useful, even generous after a fashion, but it was still a knife in the belly. Jaffe wasn’t how America was supposed to work, even when ruined beyond repair.
The cop nodded. “Makes sense. Lots of expired canned food floating around these days. Even in City Hall, we can’t afford the organic stuff all the time.”
After that, the cops ignored us except when one asked the room at large if anyone knew what kind of cable was needed for the DV camera she had. I did—Firewire. It took an hour and three failed attempts to get the film recorded right off the projection screen, and the file uploaded. We held our collective breath, waiting for the Internet, or even just the power, to konk out as it often did.
“Look, I need to go,” I said, finally. “It’s up. People will look at it, or they won’t. It’ll be on the front pages of the Taipei Times tomorrow, or it won’t. I don’t know what to make of the film, and it didn’t help me understand anything, except that I don’t want this anymore.” I handed my city-issue cell phone to the nearest cop, but he threw up his arms as though the phone were infectious. So I just put it on a desk and made to leave.
“If we need to reach you–?”
one of the cops called out.
“You already know where I live!” I took the steps, and stopped by Jaffe’s office to liberate a few cell phone chargers and batteries. “But as to myself, my guiding-star always is, ‘Get hold of portable property,’” I said aloud to the empty room.
Life had returned to the Civic Center. Tents were being righted, fires lit for the evening. A few percussionists were out, beating on white buckets and scavenged tom-toms. How many of these people even knew that until a few hours ago, San Francisco still had a mayor? Unelected, incognito, the Taoist answer to government.
The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist.
The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.
Next comes the one who is feared.
The worst one is the leader that is despised.
Jaffe was despised, but only by Thunder and whoever her real friends were. The rest of us, the real San Franciscans, hardly knew she existed. Whoever the next mayor is, he’ll probably be despised. Almost certainly be a he as well. The sporadic electricity, the still pretty good plumbing and water, these I suspect we left behind on the floor of the sub-basement of City Hall.
I found a liquor kiosk whose contents hadn’t been completely smashed or looted by the afternoon’s general evacuation, and made some trades. It was Saturday night, time to party, and my idea of a party was a sponge bath, drinking, and writing. I didn’t even want to think of my role in what just happened, in what might be about to happen. Though in the end the film would likely just add to the worldwide confusion over the reanimates when it wasn’t being denounced as a hoax and a fraud by debunkers both amateur and professional; things were going to change. What military power wouldn’t want to invade a still-functioning port city if they could somehow protect themselves from “the fog,” and then get it in a can and sell it? Some tin-plate dictator would at least try now.