The Reanimation of Edward Schuett
Title Page
Part One:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Two:
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Part Three:
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Part Four:
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
The Reanimation of Edward Schuett
Derek J. Goodman
Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.
Copyright 2012 Derek J. Goodman
Cover art by Christian Dovel
www.PermutedPress.com
Part One:
Wisconsin
Chapter One
All of his nerve endings started working again at the same moment, and for the first time in over fifty years Edward Schuett tried to scream. He failed. There were not enough of his vocal cords back in his throat yet.
Eventually, the pain became so strong that he nearly passed out, and as he lay on the floor the agony became a sort of background noise while he slowly became aware of his surroundings. He was in someplace dark, someplace cavernous. As he thrashed about he occasionally felt his limbs smack various things strewn about him, but he didn’t yet have the presence of mind to wonder what any of these stray objects might be. The debris he sent skittering away made echoing noises, but he couldn’t yet begin to guess where he might be or what he was doing here, or even who he was. These questions occurred to him on some level, but he didn’t have the concentration yet to dwell on them.
The pain didn’t go away completely, but it receded enough that he was able to feel other sensations. He felt heat, an uncomfortable warmth just below the skin that coursed through his entire body. There was an alien thumping sensation in his chest, and his ribcage moved uncontrollably up and down to force air in and out through his mouth and nose. He couldn’t remember at first what these things were, and fear passed through his mind for a moment before he remembered them from the past, from some distant moment he couldn’t think clearly on. This was a heartbeat. This was breathing. These were things he was supposed to do, and the realization came to him that for the longest time he hadn’t done either.
Then there was another sensation, something that he was most decidedly not supposed to feel at all. It started in his stomach, a gurgling like something liquid was boiling over inside. Then it felt like a tickle moving up his throat. The muscles in his stomach involuntarily clenched, and instinctively he rolled over onto his side before the sensation fully overcame him. His stomach clenched again, and this time he felt something come up and fill his mouth. He opened it and finally made a retching noise as a thick dark stream spewed from between his lips. The instant it was out he felt a little better. Some of the pain was even gone, although it still throbbed throughout his entire body in time with his heart, and he turned over on his back. He lay there for a long time, and eventually he lost consciousness.
When he woke back up again the pain had come back some, but it wasn’t at quite the debilitating level it had been before. He was still on his back in the exact same position he had been before, but now there was a subtle difference in the light around him. The place he was in was still dark, but not so dark now that his eyes couldn’t adjust and pick up ambient light from somewhere. He didn’t know what that meant yet, didn’t even know what anything that had been happening to him really meant, but it allowed him to at least begin to get his bearings. He sniffed something nearby, a sensation that simply by itself felt strange and new, and he realized that his sense of smell wasn’t working completely right. It was working enough, though, for him to know that the puddle of vomit that had come out of him earlier was right next to his head. He turned and looked at it, and a dim part of his brain knew he should have been revolted by what he saw. Instead, however, he just stared at it, trying to understand it and failing.
In the thin light it was impossible to tell the exact color, but the vomit was something dark and thick, either red or blue or possibly black. There were chunks sticking out of the thick sludge, chunks that probably would have been unidentifiable even in full light, but parts of it were moving, too. The moving bits came up out of the dark sludge and squirmed about, and they were a much lighter color than the rest of the vomit. Maggots, he realized, and unless he had been lying here for a lot longer than he thought (which could admittedly be possible, since he only had the vaguest sense of what time was at the moment anyway) then they had to have come from inside him just like the rest of the vomit.
The movement of his head to look at the vomit had made him dizzy for a moment, but it dissipated quickly enough. He tentatively moved his arms and legs, little flexes of the muscles here and there, and although parts of his limbs felt stiff and unresponsive, even tingly like they had fallen asleep, he still felt like they were strong enough that he might try getting up. He planted his hands at his sides and tried to push himself into a sitting position. At first he didn’t seem to have the muscle control to do such a simple maneuver, and besides fumbling around trying to get his arms to move the right way he also felt a sharp pain and stiffness in his back. He gritted his teeth, but the pain now was nowhere near as bad as it had been when he’d woken up earlier. This was pain he could get through. After several false starts he was finally able to push himself into something like a sitting position, and he could finally get a better look at the place around him.
He recognized the type of place he was in right away, but it took him several confused minutes before he could think of the right word for it. He was on a linoleum floor, and on either side of him there were rows of light colored shelves. There were some boxes and packages up on the shelves and a few more littered around him. He reached out to grab one of the packages, struggling to get his fingers to move right, and the package slipped out of his hand. After a few more tries he managed to get a weak hold of it, and he was able to bring it up closer to where he could see it in the dim light. The package had a cardboard backing with some sort of plastic bubble attached to it. The plastic was dented and cloudy with age, but it had originally been clear and he could still see something inside that looked like a little man holding a gun. An action figure, he remembered it was called. They were all around him. He was in a toy aisle, and the echoing cavernous building around him had to be a department store.
His first thought was What the hell am I doing here? His second was Who the hell am I, anyway?
He sat unmoving in the middle of the toy aisle, attempting to ignore the returning queasy feeling in his stomach, and tried to t
hink. His name came to him after not too long, but that didn’t help him much. His name was Edward Schuett, but he couldn’t place any memories to go with the name. It seemed meaningless for now without any context. He had a few brief flashes, a momentary passing memory of sitting on a couch drinking a beer and watching NASCAR on television with a woman sitting next to him, but the memory felt random and unimportant. As much as it gnawed at him that he couldn’t remember much, it seemed much more important to figure out what was going on in the here and now. And in the here and now he was sitting in a toy aisle about to throw up again.
The reflex in his throat came upon him once more, and another stream of vomit flowed out to join what was already next to him. There was not as much this time, but he didn’t yet have the sense to be grateful for this. The fluid that finished dribbling out his mouth didn’t seem to have quite as many maggots this time, and that at least felt like some small triumph. He moved to get farther away from the puddle, managing a kind of crab-like shuffle despite the continued stiffness of his arms and the general uncooperativeness of his legs. He looked down at the legs, trying to see what if anything might be keeping them from working properly, and for a moment he didn’t see anything that could give him a clue. The jeans on his legs were old and molding, though, with multiple tears and holes all up and down them. They felt strange against his skin, stiff and yet moist at the same time. There might have been stains all over them, but he couldn’t be sure in this light. He reached out to feel them, trying to understand why they might look this way, and that was finally when he saw his own skin.
He stopped when his arm came into view, realizing that its motion was far jerkier than it had any right to be even after being so stiff, but that hardly seemed like the most important detail at the moment. Again he had a vague flash of memory, this time of himself barbequing outside. He saw his arm in the memory, decent sized in the bicep with forearms that might have seen a little more development than the other muscles. In the memory there was a tattoo on his inner left forearm of four playing cards, two aces and two eights fanned out. It was that tattoo that told him what he was seeing in the memory and what he was seeing now were indeed the same arm, but that was where all the similarities ended. The tattoo now was barely visible with just the faded outlines of the cards all that remained. Despite the dim light he could still tell that the color of his skin was completely wrong. In the memory his arm had a light tan to it, but now the skin was much darker, darker than anything that could be achieved just from the sun. Although it was still hard to tell in the wan light, his skin might have been a sort of grayish green.
And it had holes in it, deep decayed holes with maggots squirming inside.
Edward screamed again, and this time he had more success. His voice cracked and he didn’t achieve much volume, but at least it was recognizably a scream. He pulled the arm out of his view as the scream echoed through the cavernous store, not wanting to admit what he had seen, but he couldn’t un-see it. The damage to his arm was so horrible that he shouldn’t be able to move it, but even as he sat there he could feel more sensation returning to it. He could move his fingers now with more ease. And that led to his first truly coherent train of thought.
Whatever was wrong with him, it couldn’t just be his arm. If he checked the rest of himself he would probably see the same improbable decay. And with that kind of breakdown of the flesh, there was no way he should have been alive.
His hearing hadn’t fully returned yet and he was too busy thinking about his current horrifying state to concentrate on anything else, so he didn’t hear the moans from elsewhere in the store that responded to his scream.
Chapter Two
More time passed before Edward tried to stand up again. He knew something was very wrong with him, but his mind wouldn’t let him confront all the implications yet. Instead, he sat on the floor, rocking slightly, trying to keep his thoughts blank. But as his nerve endings worked better he came to realize, even through the still-present ache through his entire body, that parts of his legs were actually growing more numb. He tried to move them and felt the tingling sensation that let him know they had fallen asleep on him. This was enough to get his mind once again focused on self-preservation, and he attempted to stand once more to wake them up. It was easier now, especially since it occurred to him this time that he could hold onto the shelves for support.
When he was finally in a standing position he took a deep breath. It was at once an unfamiliar sensation and a great relief. He had never thought that a simple breath could taste so sweet. The breath reassured him that, no matter what was wrong with him or what strange disease he might have, he was alive. For now that would have to be enough.
He walked down the aisle in slow, deliberate steps, having to concentrate on each one or else collapse once more to the floor. Even though he tried to keep his thoughts on the task at hand, his head was clear enough now that he could wonder what exactly had happened to both him and the store around him. He still couldn’t remember many details about himself, but considering his physical state that might be a blessing.
The department store, on the other hand, felt like a safe thing to contemplate. His first thought was that the store had to have closed down at some point and he had just stumbled into it, except there were the shelves to consider. A closed down store wouldn’t have all the merchandise on the shelves, but this place was still well stocked. As he made it to the end of the toy section and turned into a wider central aisle he found there was more ambient light, and he had a better view of his surroundings. He passed out of the toys and into housewares, glancing every so often down the aisles for anything that might be a clue. Most of the items here didn’t look they had been touched. Toasters, microwaves, blenders, and other such appliances were all forgotten, although here and there boxes or display models had been knocked off the shelves. Some shelves were nearly empty, though, leaving only a few towels scattered around. In the utensils section, most things were still there but all knives were gone. Although he knew these things should have been clues he still couldn’t put it together.
At least the layout of the store was familiar. It was a Walmart, specifically the one he remembered always going to for his groceries. That, in turn, sparked a few more memories. He remembered coming here to get brats and buns for a cookout. A Fourth of July cookout, in fact. The cookout had been a last minute idea, since Julia had suddenly found out that she didn’t need to work that day and they would be able to spend the holiday together. He’d come here, bought what he needed, went home to fire up the grill, but then…
Wait. Julia. The woman he had remembered sitting on the couch with him watching the race. That had been Julia. His wife. As soon as he remembered that, another memory came unbidden into his mind. The memory of holding her hand as she screamed, a memory that at first might have seemed like something terrible. It was terrible to begin with, since the pain she had been in was so bad and he had wanted to do anything at all to take it away, yet the memory was still happy. The pain had ended with the birth of their daughter.
He was married, and he had a daughter. Dana. These memories made him stop in his tracks and take another deep breath. He didn’t know how he could have possibly forgotten these things, but now that the memory was back he no longer felt so scared.
That still didn’t answer the question of what had happened here, though. The more he wandered the store the lighter it got, so the light had to be coming through the front doors, but the light didn’t show him anything that made the answer look simpler. All the items on the shelves had a thick layer of dust on them, so thick he couldn’t even see many of the labels, and several aisles were thick with old cobwebs. Whatever had happened here occurred a long time ago, but that didn’t seem possible. As far as his newly returned memories were concerned, the Fourth of July cookout had been yesterday, but the state of the store proved otherwise. His memories were not as fresh as he had initially thought they were. He didn’t want to think just yet what th
at might imply about Julia and Dana’s whereabouts.
The closer he got to the grocery section of the store the more he realized that, oddly, someone at some point had used this store as their home. The shelves in the grocery aisles were, unlike the rest of the store, picked clean, and in one far corner of what had once been the deli section he could see a mountain of trash and emptied tin cans. In the open spaces near the checkout lanes Edward saw several tents. A few were still standing while most looked trampled, but every single one of them looked as if they had been abandoned many years ago.
“What the hell happened here?” Edward murmured, and was shocked at the sound of his own voice. It sounded scratchy, out of tune, but still the relatively young voice he’d once possessed. It occurred to him now that if whatever had happened here was years in the past then he should have been much older, but he didn’t sound old. He thought for a second that he wanted to find a mirror and see what he looked like, then remembered the hideous mess that was his arm. On second thought, maybe he wasn’t ready to see himself after all.
The biggest sign that something had once gone wrong here, however, was the west entrance near the grocery section. Normally there should have been two sets of glass doors, one on the outside of the building leading into an area full of carts, vending machines, and a few video games, and the second leading into the store proper. Neither set of doors remained. Just inside the second set of doors there was a beat-up Hummer, its front windshield cracked and its front passenger-side bumper imbedded in the cinderblock wall. Glass from the two sets of doors littered the ground, sparkling in what light came in from outside. Colors were easier to make out here, and there were several dark splotches on the ground and walls that could only be dried blood. Edward stared at it all, trying to concentrate long enough to put together some scenario that would explain the scene. He was inspecting the Hummer, its driver-side door still open, when he heard a noise somewhere behind him in the store.
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