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

by Ivan Turner

  "It's the cancer. Apparently, nothing beats cancer. Not even the zombie plague."

  Naughton was shaking his head. "Wait a minute. The cancer's gone. You had surgery and chemotherapy. You're in remission."

  Heron shook his head. "My latest series of tests showed that it had survived and spread."

  "When did you find out?"

  "This morning."

  Luco, gripping the clipboard that held his chart said, "Well, you're free of the infection anyway. I can't determine what effect it's had on you until we run those tests. Why don't we head up into the hospital so we can do them properly?"

  Heron nodded. "I'll just get my things."

  He shuffled about the place, gathering up his things, wondering whether this was good news or bad news. He didn't tell Naughton that he had gotten bitten intentionally. Now that the infection was gone, he had to face the cancer again. Unlike when he'd been given the news that morning, he didn't feel free or elated. He wasn't frightened, though. Just depressed. Taking on the zombie infection had been his Hail Mary. He'd attempted to beat the cancer with something stronger but it turned out that cancer was the strongest of all.

  As he double-checked to make sure he had all of his things and grabbed his dead cell phone, he realized just how unfair it was that he hadn't yet called Alicia. What would he tell her now? Though he could see how eager Luco was to get him upstairs for tests, he didn't think he could wait any longer. He borrowed Naughton's phone and ushered them out of the enclosure. Taking a deep breath, he made the call.

  ***

  When Ludlow returned to the Zoo, he was feeling far less sure of his intentions. The rational side of him had scurried away and was hiding in a deep dark corner of his mind. Paul was back on duty and standing just inside the corridor when the doctor entered.

  "Hi, Rudy," he said. "You all right?"

  Ludlow shrugged. "Stress, you know?" To most of the staff, Ludlow was a high profile geneticist who had signed on to assist Dr. Luco. Only a handful of people knew his real connection to the zombie plague. That in and of itself was an additional weight upon his shoulders. There were so few people to whom he could talk.

  Paul nodded, smiling. "Hey, this is my last rotation. Do you want to grab a beer when it's over?"

  It was a tempting offer. Ludlow had so few friends in the States and had shied away from forming relationships. "Maybe."

  Paul nodded again, this time with an air of finality, and began his long walk to the other end of the Zoo.

  Can I come?

  Ludlow looked in at Todd. Now he was dressed in a pair of dark blue jeans and a tight black shirt. He looked a bit healthier, a bit more filled out.

  "You can't come," Ludlow said. "I'm sorry."

  Then what are you doing here?

  "I wish I knew."

  You wouldn't have come if you weren't going to let me out.

  "If I let you out, Paul will stun you and put you back into your room. Then he'll arrest me and where will we be then?"

  That's a good point. I'd miss our little talks.

  "Well, that makes one of us."

  Ha ha. That's a good one, Rudy.

  But Ludlow didn't feel much like laughing. Instead he sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Todd's cell and stared in at him. When he blinked, Todd returned to his normal self, naked and dirty. But he was still standing up against the glass, his empty eyes pointed toward Ludlow.

  What do you want to talk about, then?

  Ludlow didn't answer and Todd didn't say anything else. They just stood there like that until Paul wandered back over.

  "Rudy?" he asked dubiously. "What are you doing?"

  Ludlow didn't answer at first. Then, when Paul prompted him again, he asked, "You do see him, don't you, Paul?"

  Paul looked through the glass. There was Todd, standing right up against it, fingers splayed out on the smudged surface. "Of course, I do. But I try not to really look at them. You probably shouldn't either."

  Paul wasn't stupid. He knew that Ludlow didn't really have any business in the Zoo. The behavior specialists came to stand and stare at the zombies for hours. Some brought laptop computers and chairs. But Ludlow's work was in the laboratory with tissue samples. His frequent visits were becoming alarming.

  "This one is special," Ludlow said with pity in his voice.

  Paul looked at it and then back at Ludlow. "How so?"

  "He talks to me."

  "No kidding." Paul smiled and reached down to help the other man to his feet. "I think you ought to go."

  Getting up, Ludlow focused his eyes on the guard. "Why should I do that? I have clearance."

  "It’s not the clearance, Rudy." He tapped his head. "It's the clearance."

  That didn't make any sense.

  "That doesn't make any sense."

  Helping Ludlow to his feet, Paul took him gently by the arm and nudged him toward the door. "Why don't you get your things together and then we can go have our beer? I'm only on for another twenty minutes."

  Ludlow stopped and turned back to Paul. Furtively, he glanced at Todd. Todd was wearing a long sleeved polo shirt with a cream yellow sweater over it. He had on these ridiculous knickers and a beret. He took a mock swing with an imaginary golf club.

  "Rudy?"

  "He wants me to let him out," Ludlow confessed. "To make up for what I've done."

  Paul's hand found the panic button on his radio.

  He's going to sound the alarm! Todd shouted.

  "There!" Ludlow cried, turning and grabbing Paul by both of his arms. "Did you hear him? He just cried out."

  Paul struggled free. "Rudy, don't make me…"

  "He's behind you!"

  Too late, Paul turned. Todd was strong and coordinated, unlike any other zombie Ludlow had seen. He spun Paul on his heels, keeping complete control of the hapless guard's arms. Then he reached up, grabbed Paul by the head and broke his neck. Without hesitation, he stripped Paul of all of his clothing, set the clothing aside, and began to feast on his flesh.

  Plastered up against the wall, Ludlow could do nothing but watch. Disgusted by what he was seeing, he knew now that his responsibility for lost lives had redoubled. So, powerless to stop Todd from continuing his cannibalistic endeavor, he slumped down against the wall and prayed that he was next.

  ***

  Heron told Alicia everything that had happened to him that day, starting with the doctor's prognosis and ending with the cure for the incurable infection. She took it well. Well, she took it silently. He supposed that if it weren't for the two fatal illnesses he had experienced that day, she'd have torn right into him. Thank heaven for fatal illnesses. Instead she controlled herself and asked if she could come see him. He told her she should do that. It would do them both good.

  Just before turning him over to an army of lab technicians, Luco told him that he wouldn't be able to go home that night. It didn't surprise him, but it didn't make him happy to have to hear it from her. While there was no sign of the infection, they weren't taking any chances on a reoccurrence. Heron had a penchant for reoccurrences. The techs wasted no time in putting him into the one of the full body imaging machines. There were actually two more appointments for the day but Luco had trumped them. Wherever you went in the hospital, the word zombie got you priority over everything else. The machine confirmed that the cancer was still present in the lungs and the lymph nodes and pancreas and several other parts of his body. It was just everywhere.

  The results were in. Cancer beats zombie plague.

  Luco didn't know why. Perhaps it had something to do with the way the bacteria reprogrammed the body. The cancer was an enemy it couldn't allow to exist but fighting weakened it so much that his own immune system was able to kill it off. Or, perhaps, the effect the cancer had had on his immune system had made it stronger. She took more samples from him. She took so many samples that he felt he would be leaving the hospital with less than he'd come in with.

  By the time Alicia showed up, everyone was f
inished pulling a pound of flesh. Heron had been checked into a regular room and was sitting in bed, playing with the television. His phone was charging on the nightstand. When his wife walked into the room, she had a look that he had seen on countless battered women's faces in his early days as a police officer. Though he would never lay a hand on her (she'd kick his ass), he could tell that he had abused her severely over the past several months. This was just the last kick in the head.

  "I was thinking about you," she told him after a guarded hello. "I was thinking about who you are and what this cancer and this job have done to you?"

  He didn't know how to respond so he just didn’t.

  "I know you, Anthony. You may think all of this has changed you but it hasn't. When I thought about all of the things you've done, all of the mistakes you've made, I realized that you could never have done it any differently."

  When he still didn't know what to say, he told her didn't understand.

  "You don't know how to lose," she said to him. "And this just keeps beating you down. You try to protect people but they keep dying. You do your best to fight cancer and it comes back. You try not to bring your pain home and you end up hurting us. And the more you lose, the more desperate you become. The more desperate you become, the more destructive your choices become."

  "I do my best," he said, frustrated with her analysis.

  Shaking her head, she responded, "No. You only think you're doing your best."

  "That's not fair, Alicia. I…"

  She took a deep breath, cutting him off in mid sentence. "Did you get bitten on purpose?"

  "What?" he blurted. "What kind of a question is that?"

  She nodded to herself, knowing now. "I'm surprised Lance didn't see it. It's just another desperate act to beat the unbeatable."

  "Well," he said, looking away, not bothering to deny it. "Didn't I?"

  "No!" she shouted. "You're still sick!"

  He nodded. "Alicia, I can't do anything about that. But at least we finally found something that's stronger than the zombie infection."

  "Cancer? Big deal. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease. Even you chose the plague over the cancer."

  He couldn't argue with that.

  "And how much cancer does it take?" she asked him. "You're dying, Anthony. How many people are out there right now whose cancer isn't strong enough to kill them or the plague? Exactly what do you think you've discovered?"

  "You wouldn't understand."

  "Don't tell me," she snapped at him. "I understand you better than anyone. You did it because of that thing you had locked up at work. I don't know what you saw in her that wasn't dead, but you thought you could grab hold of it, too. You weren't looking to die sooner. You were looking to beat the cancer."

  She sat beside him and took his hand. "Anthony, you've made some really bad choices in the last few months."

  He looked at her. All of his charm was gone. All of his spirit was gone. He was ugly.

  "Do you know what the worst decision has been?"

  He laughed a little. "I'm sure you'll tell me."

  "I'll tell you," she confirmed, not at all accepting of his attitude. "You keep trying. You seem to think that you're better than everything that's happening to you. But you keep on losing."

  "That's enough!" he cried. "How can you sit there are keep…just…attacking me again and again. Everything I've done, all my bad decisions have been for someone else."

  "Really?" Alicia was not to be cowed by volume. "You smoked for years and years when you knew it was going to kill you. Who did you do that for? You picked a psychopath as your second in command. Who was that for? You made friends with one of those things and went to spend Christmas with it. Who was that for, Anthony? Who was it all for?"

  He didn't say anything. He could justify his selection of Frank Culph as his second in command. He could justify bringing the Linda zombie back to headquarters instead of having her carted there to Arthur Conroy. But the smoking…there was no excuse for that and there never would be. He had smoked because he was addicted but he had grown addicted because he'd liked it. And she was right. He'd known all along that it would kill him. After all, it had killed his father and his aunt and plenty of others in his family alone.

  "I'm sorry," he mumbled

  "Don't be sorry. Be smarter. Do you really want to face this alone?"

  Only Alicia Heron could threaten a dying man. Only she could discount all of his maladies and treat him like the criminal instead of the victim. It was why he loved her. He knew she didn't want to leave him. Even at the very worst of their time together, she had stayed true to him and told Mellie about what a hero he was. But the road ahead was going to be hard. If he chose to walk it alone, she would no longer follow behind, trying to catch up. For the first time since receiving his diagnosis, he was afraid. He was afraid of being alone, afraid of the worlds that so often tried to infringe upon and take over his life. So, in answer to her question, he shook his head and reached out for her. She allowed him to take her in his arms, but pulled away quickly.

  "You'd better mean it," she said.

  "I do," he said. "I really do."

  ***

  Luco was still upstairs in the hospital waiting for some of the results of Heron's tests when the 911 page came through her phone. She checked the number quickly and dialed it. The news chilled her. Something had happened in the Zoo. One of the guards had been killed. One of the zombies had escaped.

  Naughton had left shortly before. His next few days would be busy as he helped transition control of the NYPD Undead Unit to the government. Now she desperately wished that he was there with her. It was a feeling that both warmed and disgusted her. It was nice to have someone to depend on. It was terrible to be dependent. She rushed out of the labs and down flight after flight of stairs. Reaching the ground floor, she burst out of the stairwell and charged across the lobby to the corridor where she would find the entrance to the zombie installation. Her identification granted her access, which meant that they hadn't locked the place down.

  There were two guards posted at the bottom of the stairwell. They tensed when they saw her. Their orders were to let no one inside. She didn't give a goddamn about their orders. The debate was short. She headed straight for the Zoo, which was deep inside the installation. As she went, she took small moments to observe the looks on the faces of the people who hadn't gone home for the night, and now wouldn't until someone authorized an all clear. There were guards everywhere and Luco had trouble getting past them. She showed her ID and shouted her name so many times that she would be hearing it in her sleep for days. Finally through, she burst into the area and got her first look at the scene.

  The security chief was not there. No doubt, he was analyzing the video records to see what had happened. A man lay dead on the floor. He was partially eaten, apparently a hasty meal for the escaped zombie. He was also naked. Luco didn't recognize him. One of the doctors, Albert something, was inspecting the body very carefully. A few paces away, Ludlow sat on the floor hugging his knees to his chest. Two more guards were standing over the scene while a third was carefully checking out the rest of the cells.

  "Does anyone know what happened?"

  "He probably does," Albert said, indicating Ludlow.

  Luco knelt in front of him and took his hands in her own. He was clean of blood and seemed unwounded. His hands were cold. "Rudy? Are you all right?"