“Aw, it’s just that I used to come here as a kid, with my mom. It was awesome, like a giant playground. It’s just a shame seeing it decaying like this. I mean, you see that rickety gazebo over there?” He pointed up the road to an overgrown patch of grass where a wooden gazebo had collapsed inside on itself.
Tori patted his arm. “I see it, Sugar, I see it just fine. You okay?”
Henry’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth as he fought back his tears.
“I had an uncle; he stayed here. I mean as a patient; he needed help. It was my mom’s brother. Anyway, he had some problems, some had ones with drugs and alcohol and Lord knows what else. Well, he and I, we …” he voice trailed off.
“It’s okay, you can tell me. Just let it out.”
The warmth of her soft hand gave him the strength he needed.
“We built it. It took two weeks, but we did it. It was one of the best days of my life when we all sat in there and ate. Mom made the best ham salad sandwiches and lemonade. The folks in the cafeteria even brought us some cookies and ice cream.” He wiped the tears from his eyes. “It was just a great day … for all of us.”
Jimmy had been there, too, but he didn’t want to say it. He could only assume Tori figured so much. It was hard to believe that his life, once so simple and perfect, had turned into what it was now.
“Well Henry, it’s a shame,” Tori remarked, patting his knee as they stared at the gazebo.
“I know. I guess … I guess we just didn’t do a very good job.”
Tori burst out into laughter, and it wasn’t long before he followed suit. One thing that the pair had managed to survive on the past few months was a sense of humor. If they couldn’t find a way to laugh, at least once a day, they wouldn’t have made it this long.
“Funny, why haven’t you ever told me that before?”
“I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t want to think about it. I guess I needed to share that with someone, someone special that is.” He squeezed her hand.
“Oh Henry, give me a kiss.”
He pressed his lips against hers, and within seconds his sadness was washed away with elation. He didn’t care who saw, either, but the complex was like a graveyard, and besides, they were both adults.
HONK! They both jumped as Tori pinned him back against the steering wheel.
“Geez, that scared the poop out of me,” Tori said. “Wow Henry, you really surprised me with that kiss, too. It was one of your better ones; I’ll say that, but we’re gonna have to go.”
“Why? I mean, no one will know. I’m trying to be more adventurous here,” he said, pulling her back towards him.
“I know, and I appreciate it. I’m sure I’ll regret it, too, but I think I just peed myself, so we need to go.”
Henry pushed his glasses back up on his face, blushing, and said, “Oh, okay.”
He put the car back in gear and took a deep breath. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing right now as it was almost like he was having an out of body experience. He needed to get his head back on straight; he was beginning to feel like he was falling apart. What am I doing?
Tori was fixing her lipstick in the mirror when she asked, “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what ever happened to your uncle?”
“Uh … well, a few years before the zombies came they released him, and we never saw or heard from him again.”
“That’s sad. What do you think happened?”
“He used to talk about going to Korea a lot. Maybe he went there. I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.
“Did you ever try to look him up?”
“Sure, a few times, but no luck.”
“Does it bother you?” she asked.
Henry stopped the car.
“Er … no, but I’ll tell you what does.”
“What,” she said as she checked her lips in the mirror.
“Zombies walking around on the loose like human beings. Roll up your window, Tori. Roll it up!”
Tori gasped as she pressed the window button.
Stupefied, Henry watched two zombies lumbering his way. One was pushing a lawnmower. The other was dragging a rake.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
CHAPTER 6
Washington, D.C.
Jack lifted his custom laptop and flipped open the screen, bringing the monitor to life. It was one of the perks of the WHS, the latest in computer technology. His busy fingers tapped on the screen as he began loading up data files of information that only a handful of people in the entire world had ever seen.
“What are you doing, Jack? Are you doing to give me a PowerPoint presentation? You know I hate those things. Remember the last time … I think the Senators Grose and Sears were about to die in the middle of your presentation. I still don’t know who all of these people are that read and write bills all day long.”
Jack laughed at the remark as a spark awakened behind his green eyes. “Yeah right. Those guys don’t read or write those bills. Some old man told me that once, not so long ago.”
“Ha, ha … you remember that, do you? How old were you, twelve? I could’ve sworn you weren’t listening.”
“Oh, I was listening alright. And I was ten.”
Don reached over and scruffed up the thick brown hair on his head. The older man was smiling as his gray eyes set themselves on the images on the screen. “I hope you don’t want me to read all of that. My glasses are in the car, after all. Speaking of which … you want some coffee or something? I can have my driver bring over my Thermos. He’s really good at that.”
Jack gave him a funny look and said, “How many Thermoses do you have in there?”
“As many as I tell him to prepare.”
“You really are a piece of work, Uncle Don.
“I am, aren’t I? Now show me what you got,” he said, waving his arm up in the air. His armed escort made his way over from the car, Thermos in hand. Don closed the black case to his own custom computer, took the canister, twisted off the cup top, and filled it up.
Jack could see the steam rising from the hot beverage from the corner of his eye and said, “Gee, you even filled it yourself. Impressive. You aren’t getting soft on me, are you?”
“Some things, a man has to do for himself.”
“Huh … Hey Oliver, you wouldn’t happen to have any Mountain Dew in there, would you?”
The man remained stone-faced as he stared out into the horizon, still enjoying his smoke.
Don dismissed the man with a nod saying, “Thanks Oliver, and don’t pay my nephew any mind. He doesn’t understand war-horses like us. Feel free to help yourself; by the way. It’s getting chilly out here.” Don took a sip and followed it up with a refreshing sigh. “Okay, get on with it. What’s the latest?”
“First, it’s not a PowerPoint presentation, even though I do have one, but this isn’t that. It’s just some data I wanted to pull up to refresh my memory in case you insisted on seeing some numbers for yourself.”
“Nope, I’ll let you handle the numbers. I stopped keeping track of those little things about ten trillion dollars ago. Just give me the results, the testing, or whatever you geeks refer to it as.”
Jack shifted in his seat as he cleared his throat and said, “Since the acquisition of the XT Formula we’ve opened six new research facilities across the country, all of which are well concealed from the general public … well, from just about everyone, really. Now these are all separate and apart from the day-care facilities, one focusing on one area, and some on the others. One facility in particular is manufacturing the formula, while the others are primarily focused on using the formula for zombie rehabilitation.”
“Zombie Rehabilitation, hah. Our employers sure come up with awfully clever ways of naming their experiments.”
“You don’t approve?” Jack asked.
“It doesn’t matter if I approve or not. I just think it’s silly. I mean, when the WHS was created I thought it was the biggest joke in the world. It was cra
zy enough that the world was turned upside down by zombies, but now you have a group of people trying to sell it to the public as a good thing. And the people are buying it. I’m even buying it, because I have to. I never believed in any of it to begin with.”
Jack gave him a curious look and said, “Any of what, exactly?”
Don’s face turned a little bit pale as his eyes darted away. He took another drink of coffee. Don started to cough, and one followed louder than the last until finally the fit stopped.
“You okay?” Jack said, patting his uncle on the back.
“Fine, fine, just getting chilly, I guess. Damn, I spilled my coffee,” Don said, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the liquid off his expensive computer case. “Ah, it’ll be fine; it’s leather.”
Jack had the feeling his uncle was trying to avoid his stare, and had changed the subject as his last question seemed to have struck a nerve. A very sinister feeling rose inside him. He wanted to know everything about the zombies. He had put in his time, and he deserved to know. Had his uncle known about the outbreak before it happened? His gut was telling him yes, but Don’s expression was a de facto no. Over the years it had always seemed like there was something dark that hung over his uncle’s head after the outbreak. He wanted to know what that was. As a senior advisor in Washington for decades, he knew that his uncle knew things, things that only the world’s most powerful men and women may or may not know. He wanted to press the issue. He’s getting old. He’s gotta tell me more.
“Now where were we, Jack?”
“Well, you said ‘I never believed in any of it to begin with,’ and I asked, ‘Any of what?’ And you were about to say …”
Don refilled his cup and said, “Oh, I see what you’re hinting at. Easy Jack, what I meant was when they first reported the zombie outbreak in Washington, I didn’t believe a word of it. I’m almost eighty. I’ve seen things happen in my lifetime that I never could have imagined as a child. About ten or twenty years ago, I began to believe that just about anything could happen. Cell phones, computers, the Internet. But zombies?” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. To an old Catholic warrior like me, it might as well have been the apocalypse.”
The words seemed sincere enough, but the pitch in his uncle’s voice wasn’t as convincing as it normally was. Jack paid closer attention.
“Now the both of us work for a company that is a caretaker for zombies. Taking care of my parents before they passed away was one thing, but taking care of over a million zombies … mindless, useless and dangerous? It’s beyond conceivable. It’s frightening.”
Jack sat at his uncle’s side, letting the falling sun warm his face with the last breaths of day. It wasn’t so long ago when he wondered if he would ever enjoy another sunset again as he reflected on all of the chaos that struck those many years ago. Now, his life couldn’t be any better. He had the zombies to thank for that. Old people never see the beauty in it.
“Beautiful evening isn’t it?” his uncle said.
“Sure is. You know, this might sound strange, but on days like this I think about Nate McDaniel and how he saved the world.”
His uncle nodded and said, “With Zombie Dew of all the ridiculous things.”
“Well, if you think that is ridiculous, wait until I tell you what they are using the XT Formula for now!”
“Let me guess, they’re going to have zombies counting ballots next.”
CHAPTER 7
Institute, WV
Henry’s first instinct was to jam on the gas pedal and run over the approaching zombies. The pair of undead men moved at less than a mile per hour as they approached, and they were in total oblivion to the danger Henry and his vehicle posed.
“Run em’ over, Henry, I hate those damn things!” Tori shouted in his ear.
“Easy Tori, geez, I’m right here,” he said, almost pushing her face away.
The zombies’ slanted walking gate and slack jaws still turned Henry’s blood to ice, despite the fact that he knew he should have nothing to fear. But, here they came, wearing dark green coveralls and hard hats, of all things. He had begun to get used to their presence when he was in the complex before, but after being gone for a while the willies came right back. Now, the last thing he wanted was to have his last remaining prized possession, his classic candy apple red 1968 Mustang, damaged by a zombie pushing a lawn mower. There wasn’t a path to go around them. He was in an alley where the office buildings were boarded up on the left and right.
“Crap, I’m gonna have to back up. Are you going to be okay?” he asked Tori.
Tori sat in her seat, wide-eyed and picking her lip, and he could see the goosebumps on her arms.
“Such a fine welcoming committee. I wonder who is responsible for this mess. It better not be Rudy. That moron’s always up to something.”
Henry nodded. His friend had never been the most reliable of people and had grown quite fond of walking the grounds with the aimless zombies. To make matters worse, the director of the complex seemed to be enamored with Rudy’s bizarre ideas of giving the zombies a life of greater meaning. Henry could have slapped himself when he unintentionally pictured himself rebuilding the gazebo with the zombies.
“All right, this is ridiculous. I’ll back it up, and we’ll just go around to the other side.”
As he dropped his car in gear, he caught a glimpse of three more zombies in the rear-view mirror; they had boxed him in.
“Dammit! There are more of them!”
Tori’s head whipped around, and she let out a frightened squeak.
Henry blinked hard as he pushed his glasses back up on his face. They all had on green coveralls, white hard hats, and work boots that were scraping and dragging over the ground. One of them was holding a shovel in both hands as his neck bobbed from side to side. Another one had a pair of metal tree-trimming shears with the tip scraping over the ground, but the third one was the most disturbing of them all.
“Is that a chainsaw?” Tori cried.
He nodded his head. The sound of the small motor in the lethal instrument was very distinct in his ears.
WAHHH! WAHHH! WAHHH! WAHHH!
“Geez, it can use that thing. Lock the door Tori!”
“It is locked!”
Henry began jamming his finger into his iPhone as the zombies closed in, step by dreadful step. He set the phone on his dash board and left it on speaker as it rang.
“Henry, maybe we should get out and run! They can’t catch us. Geez, where are their supervisors! Where’s Rudy? That idiot never keeps an eye on those things!”
As the sun began to dip behind the mountains on the horizon, darkness began to envelope everything. The alley was no longer a short-cut to his office, but rather a haven for the awakening of evil. Tori clutched at his arm as he tried to swallow down his fears. His heart thundered so loudly in his ears that he almost couldn’t hear anything else at all. He looked at his phone on the dashboard, uncertain as to whether or not it was even ringing because the sounds of the roaring chainsaw and the sputtering lawnmower were caving his senses in. He looked at Tori. She seemed to be trying to say something to him, but he couldn’t comprehend it. His nerves were jammed, and his mind had frozen.
Closer and closer the zombies came, and they were singing the most horrible song.
“Num-num. Num-Num. Num-num …”
Henry always figured it was only a matter of time before the WHS had him devoured. Had they finally figured him out? Did they decipher Nate McDaniel’s code he had received? CPWWSZH. It wouldn’t have been that hard to figure out: World Humanitarian Society World Population Control. Maybe this was why they kept the zombies around, and now they didn’t need him anymore, other than to be a rat in some kind of experiment. Henry rubbed his temples.
“I’m sorry, Tori! I’m sorry, this is my fault!”
Tori was just shaking her head, speechless in the shadow of death.
The recesses of his mind began to regain their purpose as a plethora of sc
enarios became a puzzle that needed solved inside his mind. They had sent him away, on a vacation, something that was an odd and unexpected surprise. That must have been the plan: to set the trap, plan his death, and get the entire incident recorded. I bet they’re watching right now. He remembered going over the scan areas of all the security cameras that they had set up before he left. He wondered if he was going to be the first victim or one of the last. How many others had been snuffed out like this. Rudy!
He could hear Rudy’s voice on the iPhone, but it was a recording, a stupid one.
“I’m sorry, I’m not here right now, I have leaped back in time to stop NBC from canceling Quantum Leap. Please leave a message after the beep, and I’ll have my zombie secretary, Chi-Chi, send me the message.”
WAHRAAA! WAHRAAA! WAHRAAA! Went the chainsaw.
“Num-num. Num-Num. Num-Num,” went the zombies.
“Dammit, don’t you have a shotgun in this thing!” Went Tori, honking the horn and screaming like a woman gone mad.
The car was surrounded now, and the darkening silhouettes of the haunting figures pressed along the doors, pinning them in. Henry couldn’t even bear to look at their faces now. He wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. He closed his eyes and tried to block out the kaleidoscope of sounds so he could think.
Drive through them you idiot! he thought.
“Run them over you idiot!” Tori screamed as he slammed the car into gear and revved up the engine.
“Shit! He’s gonna run us over!” one of the Zombies cried out, jumping out of the way.
Another zombie was knocking on the window saying, “Hey Henry, did you pick up my beer?” It was Rudy’s voice.
The ice in Henry’s veins turned into fire. He was furious.
“Get—Away—From—My—Car!
He wanted to kill them, every one of them as he took a special note of each and every one as they removed their zombie masks. All of the horrifying sounds were gone now, replaced with uproarious laughter.
Zombie Rehab Page 3