The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

by Derek J. Goodman

  Edward spun around, or at least did his best to spin. His balance still wasn’t one hundred percent, and he tipped over and had to catch himself on the hood of the Hummer. He blinked several times, looking into the gloom further in the store, but his eyes had already adjusted to the light and the darkness farther inside looked deeper now. The noise had been low and light, and now that he thought about it maybe he hadn’t heard anything at all. His hearing was still fuzzy, although his sense of smell was strong enough that he thought he could detect something in the air, a dank and musty odor that still somehow included the lightest whiff of honey. It was possible he was only smelling himself, considering he did had a ripe odor like decaying feces. The odor would have made him sick if it didn’t for some reason feel comfortable and welcoming.

  He had almost convinced himself that there hadn’t been any sound to begin with when he saw someone moving down at the farthest end of the store. There was a wide clear aisle that went all the way from the front doors to what he assumed were the doors to the storage area in back, and he thought he saw a humanoid figure moving slowly in the shadows. Edward stared at the distant figure for several moments, not quite believing his eyes, before he called out.

  “Hey!” he said, holding his hands to his mouth to help project, but he was afraid he still might not be loud enough for the person to hear. “Down here! Please, you’ve got to help me, I think something is wrong with me!”

  For several seconds Edward didn’t hear anything, and he thought the person hadn’t heard him. Then, low and echoing down the aisle, Edward heard the figure moan. The noise was deep with a rattling quality to it. It didn’t sound like a noise a human should have been capable of making.

  Two more moans rose up from somewhere in the store. Whatever the hell this thing was, it wasn’t alone.

  Edward slowly put down his hands and took a step back. He still didn’t have enough control over his feet to do the motion properly and he had to grab hold of the Hummer’s door to steady himself. The figure moved down the aisle, but it wasn’t moving fast. In fact, given its speed and distance, Edward thought most people would have easily been able to outrun it. Edward, unfortunately, did not seem to be like most people at the moment. He didn’t think he could run.

  He wasn’t sure if he wanted to, either. Judging from the moan and the slow inexorable way the figure walked, he guessed it wasn’t something he wanted to meet. A part of him even felt a deep fear as the figure came closer, every step bringing it toward the light where Edward could see it. Yet he wasn’t as afraid as he thought he should have been. He couldn’t explain it, but some deep part of him felt excited.

  Edward heard another moan, one from outside, and he turned on the smashed-in entrances. Whatever was coming from out there wasn’t in sight yet, probably just around the corner from the entrance, but he got the feeling that it had heard him. There was another noise outside, a distant rumble, but he couldn’t quite place it yet. That noise didn’t seem as important right now, anyway. That was something far off, and whatever or whoever was approaching him from all sides was much closer. He could even hear the slow shuffle of feet coming down the aisle. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he turned to look, but it sure wasn’t the putrefied walking corpse that moved toward him.

  Edward screamed and stumbled backward, this time not catching himself, and falling flat on his back. He flailed helplessly for precious seconds, unable to get up off his back, before his hand found the doorframe of the Hummer and he could pull himself back up into a sitting position, then back up on his feet.

  In the time he’d been on the floor the dead thing had come closer and was now only about fifty feet away. There was no denying that it had been human once, probably female, but he could only recognize that by its humanoid outline. The skin was dark, almost black, and it had no more hair on its head. It reached out in his direction, and at this distance Edward could see that its fingernails had long ago fallen off. A few scraps of cloth still clung to it over the shoulders and at the waist, but the rest of its clothing had rotted away long ago, revealing patches of flesh stretched tight over its bones and what little muscle it still had. It moaned as it came closer, and again the sound was echoed by both something somewhere in the store and another one from outside.

  Another memory suddenly came to him as the adrenaline started pumping through his veins. This wasn’t the first time he had seen a creature like this. The first time had been on the day of the cookout. He’d seen one coming across the neighbor’s yard. Julia’s scream and Dana’s crying at the sudden noise had attracted more of them, and soon waves of the things had been coming at their house. He’d seen other people, people that were still living, also running and screaming down the streets. He even remembered seeing one of the creatures bite James Rohmer from across the street, and James had fallen to the ground immediately, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Edward hadn’t seen what had happened after that, because he’d grabbed Julia and Dana to pull them back into the house and lock the doors after them.

  These things might not be fast, but he had seen what could happen when a lot of them grouped together for an attack. He couldn’t be sure now if the moaning noises were an accurate indication of how many of the undead things were in the area, but there had only been one moan that he could hear from outside. He stood a better chance of escaping with his life if he ran (or did the closest he could manage) for the entrance than if he stayed in here and tried to elude however many might be hiding in the shadows.

  He turned and did a staggering, stumbling jog for the light. The tingling feeling had mostly left, but the pain stayed, growing more pronounced in his knees with the sudden motion of his legs. After only a few steps his lungs burned with the effort. Running, apparently, wouldn’t be an option yet. When he turned to look at the thing following him, however, he saw that even at his slow speed he still moved far faster than the creature ever could.

  He made it out the door and stopped just long enough to get his bearings and try catching his breath. He wheezed, and his lungs felt like there might be fluid in them, but he thought maybe he could force himself to keep up his run if it were in very short bursts. A quick look around revealed another one of the things standing less than twenty feet to his right, but even though it shuffled around a little, it didn’t look like it was moving closer. Edward walked away from it as fast as he could anyway, and looked around at the parking lot.

  There was no doubt about it. This was the same Walmart he remembered, which meant he still had to be in his home city of Fond du Lac. There were a few abandoned cars in the parking lot, and several of the lampposts had their glass smashed out. There might have been a makeshift barricade of shopping carts and various items from in the store that had once surrounded the entrance, but it had been smashed apart at some point, probably by the Hummer. All the shopping carts were rusted with age now.

  The sound he had heard earlier from out here was louder now, and he was certain that it had to be a truck or car of some sort. It was a ways off but loud, and Edward looked around for the direction it came from. He thought he could see it driving down the road toward the store, a rusty-red speck. He smiled, although the expression hurt his cheeks. Whatever the hell had happened here, whatever was wrong with him, at least he was not alone.

  Edward looked back over his shoulder at the entrance and saw the dead thing that had been following him shamble out into the open, with at least one more visible inside. Edward took a few deep breaths in anticipation of running again, but after a few seconds it became apparent there was no need. Instead of coming for him the creature shuffled over to the one that had been outside, and it stopped. If there had been eyes in the first thing’s head, eyes that weren’t glazed over with thick cataracts, Edward would have thought it was staring at the second one. The third one came out and approached the other two, and the three monsters stood there, not doing anything other than swaying slightly in the gentle breeze.

  Edward couldn’t help b
ut lose his earlier fear as he watched them. None of them looked terribly hostile. The more he watched them the more he realized just how different they were from the ones he’d seen the day of the cookout. Those had been freshly dead and reanimated while these had obviously been in their current states for a long time, but that wasn’t the most important difference. The ones he had originally seen had looked bloodthirsty and ravenous, going after any living thing that moved in a slow and unstoppable wave. These three… well, if he were forced to describe their behavior, he would only be able to call it “minding their own business.” It was completely unlike what he would have expected from the undead.

  Edward heard something that sounded like a whoop of delight from behind him, and he turned in time to see the truck turn at a high speed into the parking lot. It was a standard pickup truck, a Ford, although it looked like it had seen better days. Even through all the trauma he had just been experiencing, Edward still felt a part of him fill with disgust—he was a Chevy man, through and through. It was a recent model, as far as he could see from here, but it still looked ancient and decrepit. The paint job was mostly gone, leaving only the color of rust, and there were multiple dents in the doors. The engine sounded sick, like it was in desperate need of some tender loving care. That wasn’t too surprising, though. What else would they expect from a Ford?

  There was one thing very different about the truck, though, and it gave Edward pause. In the bed of the truck, held down with chains, was what appeared to be a large cage. It took up the entire bed and was perhaps six feet high, but it looked significantly newer than the truck. There might have been a person in the cage, but it was hard for Edward to tell. The truck was moving fast and didn’t have much in the way of shocks anymore, so whoever sat in the cage was being rattled and tossed around. For a moment Edward’s heart beat irregularly. For some primal reason he couldn’t explain, that cage made him more fearful than the three undead things just a short distance away.

  Someone in the truck whooped again, and the truck turned so it was headed straight for the west entrance. Edward thought he could make out two people in the front, one of whom was leaning out the passenger side window with a pair of binoculars in hand. As the truck sped closer the passenger disappeared back through the window for a moment. When he came back out seconds later he had a handgun and fired several times at Edward.

  Edward screamed and ducked, then did his best to stay low as he ran back for the cover of the entrance. As he passed the three undead they all turned their heads at the truck, and their previous calm demeanor completely disappeared. All three made snarling noises and started their slow shamble towards the intruders. Maybe, in whatever passed for minds among their kind, they hadn’t perceived Edward as a threat or as something they might want to eat. These newcomers, however, were apparently fair game.

  The truck skidded to a halt on the far side of the first wave of ruined shopping carts, its driver’s side facing the entrance. Edward ducked inside behind a tipped over claw-grabber machine and peeked out to watch whatever the hell was happening. The passenger side door opened and then slammed shut, and the man who had been in the passenger seat came around the front of the truck. He was tall and lanky with a knitted cap on his head, and he wore a wide, ridiculous grin. He was probably in his late teens or early twenties, judging from the spotty facial hair on his cheeks and chin. He raised the gun and pointed it at the nearest of the three creatures coming toward him, and Edward did his best to make himself small behind the broken machine. He hoped it was dark enough this far beyond the entrance that the kid with the gun couldn’t see him, but he prepared himself to run deeper into the store, just in case.

  Before the kid could squeeze off any more bullets, however, the man who’d been in the driver’s seat got out and slammed his door. “Damn it, Charlie, you can be a real fucking psycho sometimes!”

  “What?” the kid, Charlie, said. “I was only shooting at the fresh one.”

  “We can get still get cash for a fresh zed just like we can for a rotter.”

  “Not as much. So what’s wrong with using it for target practice?”

  “What’s wrong is I’m the one in fucking charge and I have the motherfucking truck. So if you want to continue getting a cut for what I bring in, then you will do what I fucking say, got it?”

  The driver didn’t appear too worried about the three monsters moving right for him. As they got within twenty feet of him he merely backed away, apparently confident that he could move far faster than any of them could. The driver was a few inches shorter than Charlie and had about fifteen more years and fifty more pounds on him. Both of them were in jeans and t-shirts, although their clothes were dark with dirt. Neither of them looked very clean.

  “Right, right, got it,” Charlie said. He tucked the gun into the belt of his pants and then went back around to his door. While he opened it and rooted around behind his seat, the driver walked around to the back of the truck, still moving away from the undead. The undead snarled and held their hands out to grab for the man, but they were still too far away. The driver, however, didn’t look too comfortable with how close they were getting.

  “Would you hurry up already? These three are starting to give me the willies.”

  “I’m fucking trying, just hold on for a minute,” Charlie said. “The prod got wedged in behind the seat again.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to be more careful with that thing? If you break it then I can’t exactly bring in any more zeds to pay for another one.”

  “Would you relax? Jesus, I’m not going to break it.”

  As Edward kept his eyes on the driver he finally remembered the person he’d seen in the cage. After a few more seconds a head came into view from inside it, and now that the truck was closer he could tell that it also belonged to one of the undead creatures. The cage had a padlock on it, and the driver pulled out a key but didn’t open the lock yet.

  Charlie cursed one more time as he gave something in the truck one final yank, and he almost fell over when the rod in his hand came free. The rod looked like a Taser at the end of a long metal pole, and although Edward had never seen one before he figured it was probably some kind of cattle prod. “Got it, Ringo,” Charlie said.

  “Good,” the driver, presumably Ringo, said. “Now knock these three fuckers out before the get over to me and chew on my fucking skull.”

  Charlie ran around to the other side of the truck, and one of the three undead did a slow turn and came toward him while the other two continued their slow march on Ringo. Charlie didn’t waste any time in sticking the business end of the prod in the creature’s gut. The air crackled and hissed, and the undead thing collapsed to the broken blacktop. The thing shook uncontrollably for several seconds with thick mucus-laced foam forming at the corners of its mouth, then stopped.

  The other two turned to Charlie as well, but they weren’t anywhere near quick enough to get him before he shocked them, too. Ringo took the key and stuck it in the lock as Charlie pushed the end of the prod through the cage’s bars and shocked the captured one. The first one he’d taken out was twitching by then, but it didn’t look like it would be mobile again for another minute or so. Ringo opened the cage as Charlie set the prod against the truck, and they both grabbed one of the undead’s arms to raise it up and throw it in the cage.

  The two of them worked swiftly, working as a team that was obviously well-practiced in this sort of thing, but Charlie had to stop a couple times to re-shock the undead things. When all four creatures were in the cage Ringo locked it back up, but they didn’t immediately get back into the truck and leave. Instead Charlie fiddled with the prod, trying unsuccessfully to twirl it like a baton while Ringo stared into the store’s entryway. He didn’t look like he could see Edward in his hiding place, but Edward tried to make himself smaller behind the claw-grabber machine anyway.

  “Hey,” Ringo said, “did that fresh zed seem odd to you?”

  “All zeds are fucking odd,
” Charlie said as he barely managed to catch the prod before it fell. He stared at it a moment, as if debating what to do with it, then leaned it against the truck again before moving to Ringo’s side. “Why? See something weird?”

  “You didn’t think that motherfucker was moving a little fast?”

  “If it was fresh then of course it would move a little faster.”

  “Not that fast. And another thing. How the hell did a fresh zed get this far out from civilization? If someone had been bitten recently it would have been closer to town.”

  “Maybe it was bitten and just walked out here after it died.”

  “Wouldn’t have looked that fresh.”

  “Then maybe someone else came out here looking for zeds to sell and got bit by one of the other three.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Still seems weird, though.”

  “You think too much.”

  Ringo snorted. “Or maybe the rest of humanity doesn’t think enough. Come on, let’s go in after it.”

  “Go into the dark cavernous building after something that likes to eat human flesh. Yeah, that really sounds like you’re thinking good.” Despite his words Charlie didn’t hesitate to go back and grab the prod.

  “Here, give me the cattle prod,” Ringo said. “You get your gun out and cover me just in case.”

  “Whatever happened to you not wanting me to shoot it?” Charlie asked.

  “Whatever happened to you shutting the fuck up and just doing what I say?” Ringo said, then walked through the entryway.

  Edward didn’t have time to think of what he should do. The time to try running to hide in the store had long since passed, so he merely stayed where he was, hoping the two men would be so anxious to get inside and find him that they would walk right past without even noticing him. But Ringo’s eyes moved to look at everything, and as soon as they turned to look at Edward, Ringo yelped and jumped back to step on Charlie’s feet.