Zombies! (Episode 9): The Changing of the Guard

by Ivan Turner

  She spent the next week figuring out what she was going to do about Zoe when she finally ended her marriage. There were almost six weeks between then and her next trip. It was a good amount of time to settle into a new situation. She could take regular custody of Zoe and leave her with Larry when she went on business trips. Already, she'd decided that she was going to be a better mother. She would speak to her boss about taking fewer trips. If he didn't agree, then she would start looking for a new job. She was young enough to still be a desirable applicant, even at her salary. Someone would hire her.

  She had just about gotten up the courage to confront Larry when she came down with the flu. It was mid September, early for flu season. The nights were chilly but the days were still hot. One afternoon, she'd felt so ill that she'd gone home from work early. Coming into the apartment, she'd practically collapsed on the bed. When Larry and Zoe had come home and found her like that, he had immediately started taking care of her. Did she actually see concern in his eyes?

  At some point during the evening, she heard him in the other room coughing. Great. He was also sick. A while later, she heard Zoe coughing as well. Whatever she'd brought into the house, she had well and truly shared it with her family.

  ***

  When Larry awoke the next morning, he couldn't tell whether Lucy was even still alive or not. He could barely tell about himself. Grabbing some sweat pants and a T-shirt from the hamper, he stumbled out of the bedroom. Looking in at Zoe, he saw that she was sitting up in bed.

  "I'll be back soon, honey," he said to her through his foggy head. "I'm going to go and get some help."

  She turned her head toward him and moaned. It was this mournful sound that cut through his haze and right to his heart. She began to move, but he told her to stay in bed and then wandered off down the hallway.

  Grabbing a long coat from the closet, he slipped out the door. It didn't even occur to him to use the phone to call for help. Behind him, Zoe came stumbling out of the corridor just in time to see the door close behind him. Lost now, she curled up under a table and stayed there until an opportunity to eat presented itself.

  ***

  Larry went downstairs, out the front door, and into the street. It was dark and there was little foot traffic. He found his way down the block, made a left turn, and started walking toward the gym. There was a hospital near there. It was about ten blocks away. He went about three before he made a wrong turn down an alley, and collapsed into the heap of garbage bags. It was there that he died.

  It was there that he turned.

  ***

  Rudolph Emmett Ludlow had grown up in a small town just twenty miles from Bristol. His parents had raised him and his two brothers and one sister with love and kindness. As a boy, his favorite pastimes had been soccer and mischief. Early on, his sister, Delia, had been the subject of his pranks but she made it quickly clear that she wasn't going to have any of it. Almost ten years older than he was, she was already eyeing the boys when he was just out of diapers and there would be no interference from a little brother. She was a classic beauty, his sister. She could have been an actress or a model or the poster child for just about anything. But she was also conventionally brilliant and had gone into politics. In fact, Delia had been instrumental in securing him his grants for the research that led to the zombie plague.

  So it was her fault.

  No. Diverting blame would lead him down a dark and dangerous path.

  Andy was his oldest brother, older by eight years. In the Ludlow family, Andy was the black sheep. He was handsome but not drop dead gorgeous. He was smart, but not stone cold brilliant. He was charming but not the kind of man that swept a woman off of her feet. The result of his "hardships" had been that, out of all of them, Andy was the most normal of the lot. He'd married a good woman at twenty five years old and bought a house in Wales. They were raising two fine sons. Andy worked for the corporate offices of a coal mining company. Within his first few months, he had established himself by reorganizing their safety protocols. Within the company, he'd been hailed as a hero. He was well adjusted and happy. It was Andy that Ludlow admired the most.

  His other brother, older by only two years, was George. George was a bit of a maverick. He was the best looking and the most charming of them all. He was a womanizer and a gambler and a drinker. He was also a con artist. In fact, he was the best kind of con artist. He was the kind of guy that conned you and, even when it was all said and done, you had no idea you’d been conned. Hell, he still kept in touch with some of his marks.

  As the youngest, Ludlow himself had garnered a lot of attention from his parents. Both his mother and his father treated him as the baby and while that engendered mostly love and kindness from his mother, his father had little patience for teaching the lessons that he had already taught three times before. That didn't mean that the elder Mr. Ludlow didn't show him love and kindness. It just meant that young Rudy had to understand things a bit quicker and a bit better than his siblings before him.

  Sometime during middle school, he'd discovered biology. That had been an exciting time for him. Even thirty five years later, he still remembered the taste of the learning. Every new thing that was revealed to him and the way that it fit into the spectrum was a brand new excitement. That feeling was addictive. That addiction was what had led him to where he was. Without ever having outgrown the need for new learning experiences, he'd set out to discover. Genetics, while a field widely explored in science, still held so many mysteries that it just beckoned to him. In England, his work had led to treatments for all sorts of rare genetic conditions. Like Denise Luco, he was a researcher first. He seldom met with patients unless they were part of a test group. Unlike Denise Luco, however, his experiences with patients had been positive for both him and them. His easy going demeanor set even those who were close to death at ease. That had helped him to ease the burden of his victims here in the States, but it did little to assuage his own damaged conscience.

  Ludlow had worked with a fair number of bacteria during his tenure. Single celled organisms were, to him, some of the most fascinating organisms. Being a single celled organism did not belie complexity. Otherwise, there would not be such a variety of them on the planet. Ludlow remembered his early experiments with the genetically engineered bacterium. He'd tested it on sick animals. After all, it was designed to heal the sick. Unlike the zombie effect which presented itself as a bacterial infection, the animals exposed to the bacterium seemed to undergo some sort of metamorphosis. At no point did it appear that they were dying. Only when they became aggressive, feeding on those in the control group did Ludlow begin running some tests on the tissue. He had found that those animals, though close to death, were still functioning within the bounds of what we normally consider alive. Some parts of their bodies had shut down and were relatively free of the bacterium while others, such as the brain and digestive organs, were teeming with it. It had attached itself to the walls of the organs and successfully destroyed the creatures' immune systems. He noticed several physiological changes in the affected organs. Much of what he had discovered back then was evident in the human samples he was seeing now.

  But the humans were dead. There was no heart beat, no circulation whatsoever. The blood in the body had been changed by the bacterium and was being used as an avenue of travel. The bacteria swam all over the body using the stale blood highway. Wherever it went, it would reproduce, rejuvenating those areas that were in decay. It was doing twice the work it had been designed to do. With the immune system gone in the wake of the person's death, it was up to the bacterium to fight off anything that might prove harmful to the body. It did so mercilessly. In many ways it had evolved. In addition to its enhanced functions, groups of bacteria seemed to work in unison with one another. Together they were very strong. The parts of the body were like molding putty to them.

  In recent weeks, Ludlow had discovered an oddity in his patients. The bacteria seemed to congregate in different places depending o
n the person. He calculated that approximately ninety eight percent of the zombies were the typical walking dead variety seen in the movies. They had no sense of self preservation, little ability to coordinate their movements, and an insatiable taste for flesh. That remaining two percent, though, had him worried. Those zombies were atypical in one or more ways. So far, none of them had displayed the capacity for true intelligence. Their anomalous characteristics, labeled personalities, manifested in different ways. A good example was Linda. She had been brought in shortly after the police debacles in Brooklyn and New Jersey. She had been held at the zombie cop headquarters for a while but Ludlow still didn't know why nor was he likely to gain access to that information. Despite being the creator of the bug, his authority was very limited. Denise Luco was in charge and didn't take kindly to anyone invading her sphere of command.

  From what Ludlow had managed to learn, Linda had been discovered in an abandoned construction yard. She was by herself and hiding under a table. There was also a sticker pasted to her shirt begging for mercy. The sticker was likely put there by someone else, either a prankster or a loved one looking to protect her remains. But the oddity was the coincidence between the sticker's sentiment and her behavior. She was completely docile. Even Dr. Mwabi, whose movements often appeared timid, would attack any live animal, including a human. But Linda seemed genuinely afraid. Ludlow was no behaviorist but he was beginning to believe that the brain held onto the last thoughts or sentiments felt by the living person. Perhaps even a suggestion could be planted.

  This theory also held up in the case of the officer who had fired the gun at the police officers who had raided St. Francis' Church those weeks ago. Initially, Ludlow had chalked that up to a physical memory that the bacterium had made permanent. It hadn't shown any real skill with the weapon, just the ability to shoot it. As to the officers' claims that it was leading the others, Ludlow doubted it. In his opinion, it was safe to say that the heightened tension had affected the perceptions of the men involved.

  Still, if this outlying behavior were to become the norm, then what would be the new outlying behavior? How long was it before they started exhibiting true intelligence? This was the new dilemma that Ludlow faced. His mind was so bogged down with the research, the unending attempts to fight the bacterium. His mind was bogged down with the guilt over having created in the first place. People in his field created new life in laboratories all over the world all of the time. But most of those organisms failed and either died out or were destroyed. But not his. His was strong and capable. It had defied nature and defied its creator by surviving, by thriving, by ruining humanity.

  Is it too much for you?

  Ludlow turned to find the voice. He was back in the Zoo. It was his new home away from home. At first, shame had kept him away. Now it was shame that drew him there. He stood close to the first of the human enclosures, close to the exit. There was a lone guard patrolling the corridor. Sometimes it wasn't manned at all. The zombies couldn't escape their cells and, even if they did, the door leading into the Zoo was locked and only passable with an ID card. The guard was down at the other end of the hallway, his back to Ludlow. He was alone.

  I asked you a question.

  Spinning, Ludlow looked directly into the cage at his right. It was Todd Mayfield's cage. The zombie Todd was sitting on the floor, its legs splayed out in front of it. But its head was turned, its eyes alive. It was looking right at him.

  Dipping his face, Ludlow rubbed at his eyes with his fists. When he looked up again, Todd was no longer sitting. He was standing right at the glass, his body covered in bits and pieces of his meals. In life, Todd had been a big man with a well defined physique. A lot of that muscle had worn away through inactivity and death. His face was drawn, his color a sallow brown. His eyes, those eyes that had been dead for all of those months, now burned as they looked deep into Ludlow.

  "Did you say something?" Ludlow asked Todd, feeling foolish.

  I did, answered the unmoving monstrosity. Is it, are we, am I too much for you?

  Ludlow looked down the corridor and saw the guard turning, starting his patrol back his way. "How can you…"

  Answer the question!

  Startled, Ludlow jumped. "Yes," he said. "It's too much. I'm so sorry."

  The Todd thing laughed at him. Sorry? You? Is God sorry every time he creates something that shouldn't exist? No. And neither are you.

  "I am," Ludlow answered. "All of those people."

  I'm one of those people and I see right through you. But you… You people are all the same. You know you shouldn't pretend to be God but you just can't help yourselves. Tinker a bit here, tinker a bit there and, poof, all of the natural laws are thrown out the window.

  "I didn't mean for it to happen this way. I didn't want this!"

  "Rudy?"

  Ludlow turned again and saw the guard. It was Paul and they'd struck up something of a friendship in the past few weeks. Ludlow was careful with his friendships. When his research had ended, he had kept people at arms' length. And then he'd met Lucy and he couldn't stand the loneliness any longer. But his affair with Lucy had had disastrous results. His affair with Lucy had wiped out her entire family and thousands of others. His discovery of that connection had been the final blow. Now he spent most of his time in the lab. The small apartment he'd rented stood cold and empty except when he absolutely had to breathe the outside air for a night.

  Paul was standing just five feet away, looking at him queerly. He was a good sort, the kind of guy that ignored social barriers. He was good enough to befriend anyone and everyone was good enough to befriend him. When Ludlow turned his head back to Todd, the zombie was sitting back on the floor in its original position.

  "I'm sorry," Ludlow muttered, not sure to whom he was talking.

  "Don't sweat it, Rudy. Talking to them isn't a problem." He smiled. "There's only a problem if they start answering you back."

  ***

  Heron mostly stopped listening after the doctor told him that he was going to die. After all, that was the bottom line. He was going to die. The cancer had come back, if it had ever really been gone. When first diagnosed, the doctor had been all comfort and confidence. It's just one spot. It's in a place that's easy to reach. Let's not downplay the seriousness of it, but there's no reason to start making funeral arrangements. Well all of that had changed. He was serious now, almost deadpan. He illustrated the situation using the results of the tests and educated the lieutenant about his chances of survival, even with treatment. A full round of chemotherapy, which would be difficult and painful, might buy an extra year of life. Probably more like nine months. Without it, the prognosis was four to six months.

  It only seemed right. Heron didn't believe that his return to smoking had caused the recurrence. He'd only been smoking a week. It was just a coincidence. God bringing the axe down on the sinner. He stood up while the doctor was in mid-sentence and extended his hand. The doctor was confused for a moment, then took the offered hand. That's what Heron liked about him. He wasn't one to push when pushing wasn't called for.

  "I guess I'll see you at the end, then," Heron said.

  The doctor nodded. "You know where to find me if you need me."

  Heron offered him a Mona Lisa smile and left. Coming down the elevator, he passed through the Emergency Room on his way out. The hospital was Sisters of Charity, the infamous Sisters of Charity. Several months before, this had been the site of the world's first public zombie encounter. A patient with the infection had died, turned, and attacked a room full of people. Though Anthony Heron's first experience with the undead had come a week before, the attack at the hospital had been a landmark event for him as well. He'd been there by chance, getting ready for his cancer surgery (fat lot of good that had been) when the ER had been locked down because of the rising dead. Well, he'd just had to get involved. In the end, the situation had been contained and his captain had given him the job of Zombie Task Force Commander. It was a job that he hadn't
wanted and one that had been beating him down ever since. By now all of the damage to the ER had been repaired and the blood long since cleaned from the walls. Doctors, nurses and orderlies bustled around the place. Security was a bit tighter and he was sure that there were protocols for handling infected patients, but there was no evidence of the trauma that had shook the institution to its foundation.

  Looking around, Heron tried to remember some of the names and faces of those who had been there on that day. Dr. Mancina. Dr. Luco. Frank Culph. And of course Abby Benjamin. It seemed that they were almost destined to know each other. He hadn't spoken with her in a few weeks, not since getting the text which had taken him and Greg Smith up to the Bronx to break up a zombie fighting ring. He still didn't know how Abby had come to be in that place. He should have asked her. He'd been negligent in not doing so. But in the end he'd found that he just didn't want to know. Sometimes it was harder to hear the answers than it was to live with the questions.