by Ivan Turner
"Shawn?"
He looked at Dawn. She was a pretty girl. That's what he was thinking. Even covered as she was, he could see how pretty she was just by looking at her eyes. And he'd been so close to spending the afternoon and maybe the night with her. And Janise? Where was Janise? Looking around, he saw her walking up the street.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I'm going home," she said.
"By yourself?"
"I'm safer without you."
He didn't say anything after that.
Dawn stared at him. "Shawn? Shawn, aren't you gonna go after her?"
He shook his head.
"She shouldn't be alone."
"You go on ahead," he told her. "I think I'm just going to stay here for a while."
Dawn didn't understand what he meant at first, then looked up at the school. "What if one of them comes out? What if they find their way back here?"
"You go on ahead," he repeated, motioning toward the receding Janise with his head.
Dawn hesitated only a moment more, completely put off by his attitude. She didn't want to be with him anymore. She thought he had either snapped or he was just crazy. So she took off at a run and shortly caught up with her friend. Shawn watched them go and noted, as they turned the corner by the pizza place where they had started their afternoon, that they didn't bother look back at him even once.
When he was alone with the snow and the wind and that gathering dusk, he went inside the school. There were some stairs leading up to the first floor and a chair at the top of the stairs. It was where the school safety agent sat when she was on duty. The chair was empty now. Shawn went up the stairs and poked his head through the doors at the top. In the hallway he saw some blood and a couple of bodies. Down at the other end, milling about a single door, were three zombies. They turned and saw him and started toward him. He should have been afraid but he wasn't. He spied a length of wood on the floor. It looked as if someone had snapped off a piece of a window pole. He didn't know how it could be done; those things were thick. But it was heavy and would make an effective weapon so he picked it up. Slipping back through the door, he grabbed the chair and carried it down the stairs and back into the snow. Once outside, he set it down on the street and sat himself in it.
Let them come, he thought. I'm ready. I'm done. Let them come.
***
It wasn't too long after her meeting with Yuan that Luco heard about the zombie attacks. It was both a blessing and a curse. With armies of zombies wandering the city, Kraemer and his soldiers would be tied up for the entire night. However, it also meant that the ER could get busy with victims despite the snow. That might cost her Yuan and she couldn't afford to lose him. She couldn't worry about that, though. She had two other problems that she had to consider.
The first was Naughton. He was coming at five o'clock. He expected her to be ready to go to his apartment and spend the snow-in there. While that idea was appealing, she felt bound to try and help Zoe. She knew that there were a million unforeseen circumstances. What she was doing was probably the most dangerous thing she had ever done and that didn't even take into account the possibility of going to jail. She would have to run. There was no other alternative. The cameras in the facility were still operating and the door locks would record her key card. As soon as she moved Zoe out of her cell, there would be no turning back.
And that brought her to the second problem. Moving Zoe. Since bringing Yuan down into the Zoo was unacceptably dangerous for him because of the cameras, they had to bring Zoe up to the ER. She could, of course, restrain her. But restraints on a sick little girl would get noticed. She didn't want to get noticed. Maybe Naughton would have some ideas.
He showed up early and came right down to her office. Her three computer monitors were showing screens of various web sites. A lot of the information had to do with resuscitation but there was one on the vascular system and auto-transfusion. Naughton was no doctor but he was no fool. He was also a policeman and, while he'd never been the most meticulous investigator, he always gave a glance to see what was interesting to his girlfriend.
"Are you ready to go?" he asked dubiously.
"Are the streets safe?" she asked, having practiced her responses to his obvious questions.
"We'll be all right. I've got a police radio in my car, remember?"
"I remember," she said, still looking at the monitors but not really reading anything on them. "Aren't you going to have to work?"
"I called Kraemer to ask if he wanted me in the field. He said I could work if I wanted to."
"That's a funny answer," she said.
"Yes, it is," he agreed. "I told Kraemer I was opting to screw my girlfriend over and over in my snowbound apartment rather than fight zombies."
"About that," she began before he cut her off.
"You can't bring her back to life, Denise."
She spun in her chair and looked up at him angrily. Naughton, however, remained calm. His way was one of composure. Even though he wanted to yell at her for her lunacy, he didn't.
But Denise Luco was not one to hide her anger. "Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can't do?"
"We both know who I am. If Zoe helps you find a cure, then great, but you can't revive her. She's dead."
"She talks, Lance. She has coherent thoughts. She called me…" she trailed off.
This admission surprised him. Denise Luco had actually been moved by a child that thought she was her mother. And now she was exhibiting a classic reaction to this poor zombie orphan. Naughton asked, "What will you do if it works?"
"I'll take her with me?"
"With you? Where are you going?"
"I'll have to leave. Kraemer won't ever approve it so I'll have to go off on my own. It's a felony."
"What’s a felony?" Naughton asked. "Is there a law against reviving a zombie? Is that a Constitutional Amendment?"
"It doesn't matter whether it is or it isn't," Luco told him. "It's going to piss Kraemer off and he'll invoke some little known vagary of the Patriot Act and have me sent off to some foreign prison."
"Then why are you doing it?"
"Because she's a person!" she shouted. "I've spent months looking at her as an it but she's not. No one here has ever felt bad for her. They're all just disgusted and want it destroyed. But it talks, Lance. It has coherence and memory and I want to make it a she again. Am I doing the wrong thing?"
"No," Naughton admitted. "But I don't know that guilt is a legitimate motivation."
"Really? Isn't it? Lance, I've carved up dozens of them and drawn blood from dozens more. I never looked at them as people. They were the giant size version of an infection. But now I'm forced to see something else. Heron was right all along. When I close my eyes, I can suddenly see the faces of every last one of those people." She laughed a little bit. "They went from being zombies to being ghosts." Which was to say that they were haunting her.
Naughton sat down in a chair and tapped his hand on his leg. His choices were very clear in his mind. He could either walk out the door, go home, and forget that he had ever met Denise Luco or he could stay and be part of her very unpredictable future. Of course, as a police officer, he was duty bound to stop her from doing what she planned. But that wasn't really an option. He loved her and that superseded his duty as a policeman. It also meant that he would never forget her. So there really wasn't any choice at all.
"When are you planning on doing this?"
She told him about what she had arranged with Yuan. He did some mental calculations, asked her how long it would be before they could move Zoe after the procedure. Luco had no way of knowing. Of course not. No one had ever brought a zombie back to life before. They were most likely safe from Kraemer while there was snow and zombies across the city. Naughton figured that it would take all night to clean up the mess and most of Saturday to put things back in order. The Mayor would want the city up and running again by Monday which meant a busy weekend for Homeland S
ecurity. Naughton wasn't sure if that was going to make it easier or harder to sneak out. Their best bet was to get out of New York tonight during the confusion. Naughton took out his cell phone and started making some phone calls. Luco watched him for a few minutes. She understood that he was making arrangements for their escape but most of the language was lost on her. If it wasn't for the fact that he had to take the phone away from his ear and redial, she wouldn't have known where one conversation ended and another began. All the while, though, what she really didn't understand was why he was doing it. She had fully expected him to say goodbye. After all of the pandering over whether or not to move to Atlanta and leave him behind, she had made a decision which she thought would put him out of her life forever. But it hadn’t. Without even a hint of hesitation, he had made the decision to stick with her. He was making the arrangements as if they were doing nothing more than going on vacation.
It made her doubt.
It was one thing for her to make a decision that affected or even damaged her own life, but she wasn’t so sure that she could drag Naughton down with her. Maybe she was making a mistake. Maybe… But, no. If nothing else, Denise Luco was strong enough to stick to her resolution. If Naughton was coming along, then that was his choice. She was no less glad to have him, but she wouldn’t allow him to add to her guilt.
As he continued his phone calls, she turned back to her research.
***
No one was in the mood to cook but there was no other option. Between the snow and the infestation of zombies around the city, it wasn't as if anyone was going to deliver a pizza. So Alicia boiled up some pasta and defrosted some ground beef in a pan. They had half a jar of spaghetti sauce which turned out to be moldy. That sort of limited their options. Alicia got a little creative and threw some seasonings into the meat and onto the pasta. In the end it all worked out okay. Even Mellie ate.
By 6:00, they were done and cleaning the table. Mellie was watching TV in the living room. Every station was broadcasting emergency information so she was relegated to the DVR. In the kitchen, Heron had the radio at a low volume, just listening for important information. He'd been telling the truth during his conversation with Satya. At least, it was the truth as he believed it. In his last few days on the job, he'd seen Homeland Security getting everything in order and preparing for a siege just like this one. They hadn't had enough information to be proactive, but they were certainly ready to react. As they cleaned up the dishes, he wasn't surprised to hear reports of the military and police recapturing infested sections of the city.
Satya and his family came a little bit early. Heron could tell that they were edgy despite his reassurances and the reassurances of the news media. Banni was a small woman, younger than Satya by at least five years. Under her coat she wore a red blouse and a pair of blue jeans. She also wore a red head scarf, which she kept on. She was quiet, barely uttering a peep as she greeted the Herons. Namdev, their son, held tightly to his mother's hand. His wide eyes kept flitting from one place to another inside the house until he caught sight of Mellie in the other room. From her vantage point, she could see them, grown-ups saying hello. The television screen cast a flickering light over her in the dark room. Namdev's hand tapped out a rhythm on his leg as the music from one of Mellie's shows drifted out of the room.
"Why don't you go in and sit with her?" Satya said to the boy. "It's all right."
Namdev looked up at his mother. Letting go of his hand, she nodded, and he was off.
"The coffee's almost ready," Alicia said to them. "Why don't you come in the kitchen and sit down?"
The four of them retired to the kitchen and found seats around the table. The conversation was awkward at first, new people getting to know each other. Both Banni and Satya had been born in India but Satya's family had moved to London when he was just a boy. The two of them had met at school several years earlier. She had been in her first year and he had been assisting a professor. Their affair and marriage had come quickly and Namdev had come shortly after that. Banni hadn't even finished school. Satya, who had majored in English literature and published several papers even at his young age, had been offered a professorship with the City University of New York, specifically Brooklyn College. Leaving England had been difficult for them. They had been in the United States barely six weeks when the first of the zombie stories had hit the news.
"That was the Sisters of Charity story," Heron said, remembering.
Satya nodded. "I was fascinated by the whole thing. It seemed so fantastic. You were on the telly the next day."
Heron nodded absently.
"If you don't mind my asking," Banni said. "Why did you leave the police?" Her accent was far more Indian. There was only a hint of the English to it.
Heron thought about just how to phrase his answer. The situation had become so complicated that he felt he should be telling them the whole story from the moment he and Stemmy had met with Shawn Rudd and began their search for the Koplowitz family.
"Basically, I was fired from the zombie squad."
This admission seemed to make their guests extremely uncomfortable.
"It's not as bad as it sounds," he quickly added. "Homeland Security came in and took over the operation. Technically, there's still an NYPD Undead Unit, but it's under federal jurisdiction. The city is just lending out its police officers to the government. I wasn't offered a role in the new organization. I was going to go back to being a homicide detective but then decided it would be better to retire."
"That sounds worse," Banni said.
Heron shrugged. "You know, it may not be the end of the world, but I saw a lot of people lose their lives. I came very close myself. Just living through that day after day makes you forget what the rest of the world is like."
Satya looked out of the kitchen toward where the children were. They were out of sight, but he could still see the reflection of the light in the front hallway. He waited, listening to the TV. Then, all of a sudden, both children burst out laughing and he relaxed.
"Will there always be a rest of the world?" he wondered out loud.
"For sure," Heron confirmed and there could be no doubt that he believed it. "We've all been so programmed by our entertainment. The apocalypse is very dramatic and glamorous when it's on screen, but less so in real life. People fight harder when they don't have to follow a script. We'll never lose."
Banni grinned wide. "I like you, Anthony. I like your optimism."
He smiled back.
Shortly they pulled two containers of ice cream out of the freezer and began dishing it out into bowls. In violation of her own rule, Alicia permitted the children to take theirs out into the living room and eat in front of the television. The clock ticked off the minutes and then the hours as they ate and talked and got to know each other. It was a very pleasant evening.
Neighbors, thought Heron at one point. I've finally gotten to know the neighbors.
At about nine o'clock the telephone rang. The sound still set both he and his wife on edge. He hadn't been retired long enough to get used to the fact that not every phone call was going to draw him out of the house on some zombie hunt. Then the caller ID voiced out loud: Call from Lance Naughton. It had that female voice that the old caller ID phones had. Though muffled it was, they could still make out the name clearly enough.
Alicia gave him a look.
Standing from the table, Heron excused himself.
He picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Anthony, are you and the family all right?"
"We're fine, Lance. Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm good. Off duty."
"It's a good night for it."
"I'll say."
"Are you and Luco cozied up at your place?"
Naughton said something but it was clear that he was talking to someone else. When he gave his attention back to Heron, he said, "I'm sorry, Anthony. What was that?"
"Nevermind."
"Anthony," he hesitated. "You know about Mayfi
eld, right?"
Heron nodded, then realized he was on the phone. "Yeah. Any word?"
"No. We've got pictures of him everywhere. "
"Did you release the fact that he's a zombie?"
"God, no," Naughton said. "An intelligent zombie that eats people in spite of its intelligence would start a war. Let everyone think he's just an ordinary mass murderer."
"Yeah, that'll calm the public," Heron said. "So what about him?"
"He's not the only intelligent one."
Heron held his breath for a minute. Once he'd learned about Todd it had borne out all of his suspicions about the others. Those suspicions had developed over time. Heron's initial thoughts were that every zombie was mindless dead flesh. He'd shot his infected partner in the head to prevent him from turning. But his experiences had indicated that there was something left inside the brain. Of course, with the Zombie Rights Association trying to protect them, those indications were buried and all talk of possible intelligence stifled. Still, Todd Mayfield had performed a calculated escape and premeditated murder. No other zombie to date had shown that sort of initiative. There had been the zombie that had fired a gun at the police, the zombie that had screamed during an operation, and of course the zombie that was afraid.