It may not have needed air or sleep or even a steady supply of water and food, but it sure as shit wanted to get out and eat me. The closer I came to the glass case, the more frantic its scratching became. And it had worn out its nails a long time ago. The scratch came from the tips of its toe and foot bones on the glass.
The poor guy had a disease that destroys you only enough to compel you to destroy the rest of whatever you are however you can. I could relate.
“Science is hell, huh?”
I touched the glass with my finger, about three inches over from where it was scratching. It moved over and scratched at that spot, trying to get through to me. I move it again, tracing a line along the glass. The rat followed. If I stopped, it scratched at my finger. I could work with this.
I traced my left finger back and forth along the glass, and it followed along. As quietly as possible, I lifted off the top. Tapping the glass to keep the scrawny critter focused. And then it was an easy mercy kill using the wrench end of the tire iron in one heavy blow to the rat’s skull. The legs had almost no twitch left in them. It had become infected a long time ago.
Returning in Kevin’s notes, eighteen days earlier, he noted something in his test subject observations whose meaning I did not understand at first. Something he considered significant. There it was. Approximately half the rats expired in a single day. Marginal note reads, “Messy.”
The continued measurements of food and water in grams and milliliters. After the “die off,” consumption dropped to nothing. Zero values recorded day after day along with a note about refreshing the supply every few days. Behavioral observations say, “Subdued” for the first several days.
Kevin thought the violent behavior and cannibalism were a passing phase, an early side effect that no one had waited out in humans because of the cost and risk implications. He was wrong. The rats started freaking again out after twelve days. He killed and dissected five of them. Trying again and again to fit facts to his theory. He had to kill two more that nearly escaped the RV. That left the one I killed. Never calm again. Dead but not still. No peace for test subjects.
Seemed more likely they had eaten their fill at the beginning. Then the virus went into some sort of dormant or feeding stage of its own, processing what the rats had ingested. Once it had taken whatever it needed from their guts, it triggered the nervous system so they became hungry rat zombies again.
The notes showed a strange change for half the remaining subjects under the “EnvTemp” column. A sharp drop to five degrees Celsius. How did he…?
I checked the small under-counter fridge in the kitchen area of the RV. I found soda, beer, some dried out pre-sliced cheese, a rotting bag of baby carrots, and a quart milk container whose contents felt more solid than liquid.
I looked around his lab area and found another small fridge behind the passenger seat of the RV. I took a breath and opened it. I found three more infected rats in identical half-gallon mason jars frosted over from the cold. The light activated all of them, and they scratched at me with claws as bad off as their fellow subject left on the outside with air at a higher temperature.
I know I killed them, but I cannot remember exactly how. Maybe Kevin’s large kitchen knife puncturing the lid and down into their skulls. That would have seemed right. I remember going for the knife in Kevin’s kitchen sink. I can see the three jars on the floor of the RV with the zombified rats not moving. But what I did is lost to me.
No air. No food. No light. Low temperature. And the virus preserved motor functions and food-seeking reactions for all three rats. Movement, craving, and consumption with none of the inconvenient niceties of life. Kevin’s success. Humanity’s boondoggle.
I packed up his journal, printed lab notes, cracked the case on his laptop to pull the hard drive, and loaded all that into the backpack. I killed the lights, tore off the microwave electrical cord and used it wire the door shut as a precaution.
One last note from the day before in Kevin’s lab notes worth mentioning: “Chipmunks.”
Returning to that story about the Spanish Inquisition. The one about the sack. More specifically, let’s consider rats in that sack.
Fill a sack with rats. Sew it shut. Drop it in deep water.
Most of the rats will not survive even if one or more of them figures out how to get out of the sack. With a sufficiently durable sack, none will escape. Either way, how many would die from drowning and how many from the desperate attacks of the other animals in the sack?
Now, what if those rats were infected with what will likely be known in the Silvercrest labs as the El Coyote Strain of the virus?
The answer is not even one could live. But one would get away. The biggest rat. Every time.
Final question in our Spanish Inquisition thought experiment: What if instead of rats, that sack was a tent and it was full of people?
The orange tent still glowed from the small electric light inside, but it didn’t look much like a tent anymore. It had deflated almost completely. For some reason, I knew there were bodies inside. Maybe it’s a skill. Feels like a curse.
I stopped and listened, killing my headlamp. No movement from the tent. Something off in the distance.
I went over to the tent. Someone or something had torn the zipper door open along the seam.
I could see the back of Tara’s head through the tear. Karen-Mother-Of-Two had braided her hair before…
Something twitched under the tent. Young Chad’s body. From the way the tent lay over it, sticky and dark with blood around the heap, there wasn’t much of him left. Tara looked to have bled out from her throat while crawling for the door. Zombie Mom had probably gone for the closest one at hand. Zombies lack any real focus other than feeding.
I stepped around the tent, moving closer to where I thought Chad’s body must be. Yep, must have been a twitch.
How could I not have heard anything?
What would I have done? Left Kevin and run over here. He had me pinned. But that stupid rat and the notes. I wasted time.
Cinnamon rolls and coffee. Reindeer jerky and heavy sweaters. Helsinki. Helsinki.
An island hosting an experimental juvenile cancer cure far enough off the coast of Finland to insist on its own sovereignty but close enough to Helsinki to get all the things that make this the happiest country on earth—good food and drink, nicely designed gadgets, good cell phones, etc. Best Quality of Zombielife anywhere.
No.
No, this was El Coyote forest. America somewhere.
Not Young Aarvo. Or Young Ergill. This is Young Chad. Young infected Chad. I knelt down with the Cowboy Cop’s knife. Something caught the light of my headlamp. Something metal. I touched his skull through the tent. A stake through the base of his skull. Expertly and humanely done.
I pulled aside Tara’s braid. Karen-Mother-of-Two had placed it there to cover the end of another metal stake. The blood had drained through that wound. No teeth marks on her neck. Her arm though. Her leg. And her side. Pieces ripped and torn from her body, but not as much as a zombie would take if the flesh had not held some infection.
Karen-Zombie-Killer. So much for my Best Bullshitter award. She knew what to do. Knew too well. She had seen the reports and probably a good deal of video. Silvercrest probably runs Zombie Threat and Eradication workshops these days. They had once tried to get me to teach those. I suppose it is another reason to be grateful for going on ice for three years. A little less corporate awfulness witnessed or enabled. The scales of justice will always tip against me, but there is less on the bad side by virtue of sitting out the game for a few years.
I sat back on my knees, draping Tara’s braid back over the stake, and then pulling the tent over her head and body.
I looked up and asked the towering pines if I could get even an eyedropper of real luck, please?
No response.
Moon? Stars?
Nothing.
When I had sipped the last of my water before heading out towards Kevin’
s RV debacle, I had thought the worst had passed. Only one zombie left out there in a big dumb sombrero. Kill him. Then back to El Coyote for Ziggy’s car and drive out of here with Karen-Mother-Of-Two and the kids. Done.
All of that deflated with heretic me escaping this bloody orange sack.
I had hoped for more time with Karen. More answers. I think she liked me or at least realized that Silvercrest owed me what answers she could give.
Truth is, she probably didn’t know all that much in her role at Loon-Boogle or whatever she called that place. This was a simple favor, probably. She’s not in espionage. Not typically. She may have attended a few conferences and meals under less than transparent circumstances, but this was the most out of the way thing she did. Her husband wanted to go camping, anyway.
Paid for by the company. All right! To observe what again, honey?
To assess the campground and the demographics of the customers it attracts, she told him.
Making these kinds of compromises is easy when they don’t look like compromises. When they look like promises. Promises of a better performance review and bonus. All you have to do is call in and let someone know if a scientist is camping there and possibly doing freelance research nearby.
Karen didn’t even have to ask Kevin about it or go looking for him. It was all so convenient. So obvious. Obvious Kevin. Unsuspecting Kevin. Confident Kevin. Proud Kevin. Lost Kevin. Anything-but-Quiet Kevin.
Maybe so I would feel better about what came next, I imagined how my last conversation with Karen would have gone.
“How do you do it, Karen?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you do what you do?”
“What?”
“You know, the corporate disregard for the fate of the planet and humanity.”
“Oh that. We ignore people. And nature. We simply ignore them.” She would offer up a small shrug. “They don’t actually exist or their concerns don’t. Which is the same thing. Or we decide they don’t have a right to their concerns, which means ignoring them is the less obvious and harder ethical choice. You can’t give in to the pressure of something or someone who has no right to tell you what to do. Easy, really.”
“Wow. I didn’t expect—”
“What? Self-awareness.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s not much, Singleton. Not much at all. This is how anyone does it. But how do I do it? How each particular person gets to that ignoring thing is different. It’s what makes us unique and kind of fun to be around.”
“But you—”
“For me, it’s having kids and believing that if there is a better world we have to get through some hard stuff. Press on through.”
“Some hard stuff? Press on through?”
“Yes.”
“Like this? Like more than a dozen dead innocent people, all mammal life in a forest poisoned with infection? Putting humanity and the entire ecosystem at risk?”
“You are so dramatic. But… Well yes. Exactly like that. Exactly like this.”
“Well then, maybe you deserve what you get, you soulless tool.”
I stood at the edge of the campsite and listened. A distant aluminum rattle scraping across the rough blacktop campground road. Scrape. Pause. Scrape. Pause. Scrape.
The sound of Karen-Zombie-of-Two dragging an aluminum tent stake behind one leg. Some luck after all.
I went out to the road and headed for that scrape, trotting with the bat ready to make a one-handed swing if necessary. She could easily wander off the road and the rattle would stop. But before too long, the rattle grew louder. And then I heard another sound. Higher-pitched. Fainter. Something I needed to be this close to Zombie Mom to hear. Metal rattling. Maybe a small chain or something. Tinkling. I paused and listened.
Scrape. Tinny rattle. Scrape. Tinny rattle. Scrape.
Karen-Zombie-of-Two had brought along more than the tent stake, apparently. I headed her direction. I saw her. A dark figure in the middle of the road. I slowed my trot to a fast walk. I could easily catch her before the bend in the road ahead where she would likely go straight into the woods as the road curved away. If I finished her off on the side of the road or at another campsite, it would make things incrementally easier for the cleanup crew.
I had it well timed. Maybe fifteen steps behind her. She should start shambling off the center of the road, walking straight for the forest. Zombies turn only when faced with an insurmountable obstacle or in pursuit of the sound or smell of food. And I was upwind.
Then something odd happened. She followed the curve of the road, staying on the black top rise of its middle. Scraping that tent stake behind her and rattling that tinny rattle every other step. I followed her all the way around the curve.
Way off in the distance, I could see the faint light of the campground reception building. Maybe she did, too, but she could not have seen it before the turn. Then she seemed to lock onto the light. I slowed my walk but still gained on her.
When I got about three feet behind her, she stopped. The gentle tinny sound came from her right hand, and her sudden stop gave it a good rattle. I could have finished her there, but I wanted to see what she had. I wanted to see her face. I lifted the bat. I was not moving, but not still either. Like a cat twitching before a pounce. The tinny rattling was the only give away that she must be sniffing me out, preparing to give chase.
I stepped backward and watched. There was enough moonlight to see the blood on her face as she turned. Her daughter’s blood covering her nose, mouth, and chin. A small piece of muscle or tissue caught in her lower teeth dangled out of her permanent zombie grin. I could be wrong, but I would swear she moved with restraint. Looking. Sniffing.
She saw me as she turned. I took another step back. Her hands came up, and the tinny rattle became almost frantic in her zombie twitch.
I took my batting stance, fairly used to them coming at me in situations like this. Typically, all I had to do was get a halfway decent swing to match their momentum and it would all be over. I looked at her hand. I wanted to know about that tinny rattle. She groaned low and hungry.
Tara’s charm bracelet. She had caught it when she went after her daughter’s not so infected flesh. I looked at her face in the split second before the virus took over her actions. Tears. Long deep streams of tears cut and cleaned the blood from her cheeks. She looked into my eyes, begging me to end this.
Infection snapped the channel from grief to fiendish craving. She ran at me. They always do. I swung for her head. At 120 pounds soaked in blood, the bat cut her down easily. I looked down to be certain the jaw could cause no more damage, and that the rest of the body fell into stasis. Lots of twitching. The tent stake rattled and clanked.
I smashed one of her feet so she couldn’t twitch up and away.
Still going.
Sigh. I bent down and finished her with the Cowboy Cop’s knife. The twitching stopped almost immediately when the knife severed the spinal cord from her reptilian brain.
Almost lost in the grip of the Zombie-Mother-of-Loss, a few of the small silver figures dangled from the chain of Tara’s bracelet. A dog, not a cutesy thing, but something like a shepherd, a soccer ball, and a small question mark. Tara-the-Unanswered-Question, I thought.
Nope. Absolutely no real luck that night.
I walked toward the now bleary campground entrance. I did not need to see it any better. Clearing my vision would mean reaching up and wiping yet another round of tears. Wiping them would mean admitting feeling something more than nothing about Zombie-Corporate-Cuthroat-Karen. Maybe if I could have admitted it or if this infection of mine made me immune to caring or capable of standing how much I do care. Maybe then I would have saved at least one person that lousy night in El Coyote.
9 The Cutting Business
An engraved wooden sign on the wall left of the front door:
Historic Logger’s Home
This typical wooden house is like many constructed for loggers and t
heir families throughout the Rockies and Northwestern United States. The modest layout and small windows helped to heat and insulate the home in winter. Typical of the surviving residential structures of this era, this home has had several additions over the years, each by different builders and for different purposes. However, all of the materials used in the various stages of construction were grown, harvested, and milled here in the El Coyote forest.
Constructed by the original occupant, Patrick Murray, foreman and co-founder of the El Coyote Logging Company in 1882, this home is the oldest surviving structure in the El Coyote forest. Mr. Murray and his wife Agnes started their family here and after five years moved to a larger house in town. This house served as a home for logging crew families assigned to this area. The Lindgren Family purchased the house and surrounding land from the El Coyote Company in 1913 and lived here until 1991, when they began the conversion of the land into the El Coyote Campground and Resort. It now serves as the camp reception center, lounge, and canteen. Welcome!
It needed an update.
In 2019, the Long-Boodge Outdoor Company, a front for the Silvercrest corporation, overpaid for the structure and the land. Long-Boodge filled it with the death, disease, gore, and human fuckuppery that is the Silvercrest brand of zombie plague threatening to destroy humanity.
I stood out on the old, lovingly maintained, wooden porch listening for zombies. Or anything other than the breeze—getting ever cooler—coming through the trees. Reaching for the switch on my headlamp, I wanted as few zombie surprises as possible. Not a sound in any direction. I raised the bat in my left hand and turned on the headlamp with my right. No zombies, though something banged and rattled inside.
The low old-fashioned rocking chairs on the porch, and the Adirondack chairs beyond them, all looked undisturbed and arranged in a welcoming sort of way.
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