Besides, he didn’t want to run. He only knew the bare bones about what had happened to the world, and he didn’t want to be out there in this new way of life while he was all alone. He wanted to know what had happened to his wife and daughter. He wanted to know what had happened to his home. And he really wanted to know how the hell he could be a zombie that was apparently in the process of being cured. Even though his fate was uncertain if he stayed, he thought he could get more answers from Ringo than out on his own. And Ringo would be more inclined to give answers if Edward didn’t simply attack him when he opened the door next.
Edward was only aware of the passage of time thanks to the subtle changes in light through the roof slats. The time had to be late in the afternoon, possibly coming up on dusk. He’d had a watch on him the day of the cookout, but at some point in the long time between it had vanished from his wrist. He’d also had a cell phone in his pocket, but the pockets of his jeans had also worn through long ago and everything that had been inside them must have fallen through. Not that the cell phone would have done him any good, anyway. He wouldn’t have been able to check the time unless he had turned it off and conserved the battery (and he wasn’t even sure if the battery would have worked after that long), and he couldn’t even be sure if the provider had survived the zombie uprising or war or whatever it had been.
It suddenly occurred to him that he was sitting here locked in a shed with some sort of zombie virus while he worried about his cell provider, and he had no choice but to laugh for several minutes. Then he had to cry for several more. By the time he was finished he actually felt a sense of relief. Whatever else was currently wrong with his body, at least he could still cry.
He didn’t know how much longer it was, but soon after he started pondering this issue he heard Ringo’s noisy truck pulling up into the driveway. He stood and waited by the door as he heard footsteps moving across the grass, and he waited anxiously as he heard a key rattling in the lock. He was determined to stand here and look completely harmless, as civilized as someone could when wearing only rags, the perfect picture of…
The door opened and Edward cried out as someone shoved the business end of a pink rifle in his face.
“Sweet Jesus, put that thing down!” he yelled. The woman holding the rifle, the same one he’d seen at the gate, looked shocked at his surprise, then sheepishly lowered the weapon. Ringo stood off to the side of the door snickering to himself.
“Sorry, I guess,” the woman said. “I just needed to be sure you weren’t going to try anything.”
“I don’t want to try jack,” Edward said. “All I want is for people to stop trying to kill me long enough so I can get some damned idea how the hell all this is happening.”
“Well, I suppose it’s about time we talked, isn’t it?” the woman said. “But not right yet. We need to move you first. Ringo’s friend—”
Ringo snorted. “I sure as hell wouldn’t call him that.”
“Ringo’s helper, Charlie,” the woman said, “he could always come back and try something. We need to move you some place safer while we figure out what to do with you. Once you’re moved, then we can talk.”
“Where are we going?” Edward asked.
“My place for now,” the woman said.
“I don’t suppose you can get me something to eat when we get there?” Edward asked. Ringo and the woman both tensed noticeably. “What?”
The woman raised her rifle slightly like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to aim it at him again or not. “And what exactly are you hungry for?”
Edward shrugged, and one of the last memories from before everything went hazy came back to him. “I don’t suppose you guys still have brats, do you? They haven’t just sort of vanished into history over the last fifty years?”
Ringo let out a single “Ha!”
The woman raised an eyebrow but grinned and lowered the rifle again. “This is Wisconsin. Of course we still have brats.”
“What,” Edward said, “you expected me to want brains?”
“I’ve never known a zombie to be too particular about what part of a person it eats,” the woman said. “But I guess I sort of thought something like that.”
Truthfully, what really started Edward’s stomach rumbling was the thought of raw brats, but he didn’t think that would go over too well with these two just yet.
Ringo and the woman led him back to the truck, and Edward was grateful that at least the woman’s guard seemed to be down. Ringo still looked edgy about being so close to an unrestrained zombie. Even though the man hadn’t been completely terrible to him yet, Edward was starting to not like the man so much.
Ringo went around to the back of the truck and fussed with his keys for the lock. “Okay. In you go.”
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to argue with armed people, but Edward was starting to get annoyed at this treatment. “Why do I have to get in the cage again? Haven’t I proven yet that I’m not going to do anything to you guys?”
“There’s not room enough for three people in the front,” Ringo said. “And besides, you may not be acting much like a zed but you still stink like one. I ain’t having you sit up there and stain the seats with your zombie muck.”
He was probably right, but that didn’t keep Edward’s anger from flaring up. This was all getting ridiculous. The woman must have seen this, because she spoke up.
“I’ll get in the cage with you, if you want.”
Ringo’s jaw dropped. “Why the flying hell would you want to do that?”
“It’ll give me and Edward the chance for that talk he wants.”
“Are you a complete fucking idiot?” Ringo asked. “I’m not going to lock you alone in a cage with a fucking zed.”
“I don’t think I have anything to worry about from him,” the woman said to Ringo. “And even if he does try something?” She patted her pink rifle. “I think Spanky can take care of me just fine.”
Ringo gave an unhappy snort and went back to opening up the cage. “Right. Fine. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
Edward stared at the shockingly pink rifle. Ringo could hope all he wanted that she knew what she was doing. Edward simply hoped that she didn’t have an itchy trigger finger.
Chapter Nine
The woman told him to keep low in the back of the truck as it started up and backed out into the street. Made sense, Edward supposed. He already looked suspicious enough as it was. It would look even stranger if someone saw that the cage held not only a regenerating zombie but also a normal human who didn’t look the least bit afraid. She stayed on the opposite side of the cage and kept “Spanky” pointed at him the entire time, but she left her finger off the trigger.
“I’m Rae Neuman,” the woman said.
Edward gave a half-hearted salute. “Edward Schuett.”
“Right. You already said that.”
“I also said I’m not a zombie, but… maybe you guys were the ones who were right on that one.”
“Yeah,” Rae said. “I figured you haven’t actually had a good look at yourself yet, so I had Ringo grab a mirror before we came out to get you.” She reached into her pocket and gingerly pulled out a piece of glass that looked like it had once been part of a car’s rear-view mirror. She held it out to Edward, and he took it, careful not to look in yet.
“I’m not sure that I actually want to see,” Edward said.
“I really think you should,” Rae said. “It might be kind of a shock, but just be grateful you’re seeing yourself now rather than earlier.”
Edward nodded and took a deep breath. He might have stopped denying that he had, at some point, been a zombie, but acknowledging that and seeing the proof of it were two different things. Everything up until now had almost felt like a dream to him, a terrible dream that just wouldn’t end, but seeing what he looked like would likely finally drive home the reality of it. A part of him wanted to hold onto the hope that it was a dream for just a while longer.
He r
emembered Dana again, and her myriad little cuts and bruises from random acts of childhood. He’d always told her the best way to remove a Band-Aid was to rip it off quick and get all the pain over with. If he didn’t get this over with and look then Dana would have a hypocrite for a father. Wherever she was, if she was still alive somewhere (and the memory of her disappearance before Julia had bit him gave him hope that she could still be out there in some shape or form) then he wanted to continue being a good influence for her.
He held up the shard of mirror in front of his face and forced himself to stare. The shard was small enough that he couldn’t see his entire face at once and doubtless didn’t get the full effect, but he was absolutely grotesque. He inhaled sharply and fumbled with the shard, almost dropping it, cutting the tips of his fingers when he caught it again. The blood that welled up from the cuts was probably darker than it should have been, but he didn’t pay it much mind. He was still trying to accept what he had just seen. With another deep breath he raised the mirror again, this time forcing himself not to look away.
His eyes were the first thing he saw. The irises looked like they were the right color, but the whites were more of a dark gray, almost black in places. It dawned on him that they were probably bloodshot, but the dark color of his blood kept them from looking pink like they should. From there he moved the mirror, carefully chronicling all the disturbing details of his current face. He had not been an ugly man at all when he was younger, although he supposed to anyone other than Julia he would have been considered average rather than handsome. So he hadn’t been terribly vain. But now he couldn’t believe that he was actually allowing anyone to see his face. His skin was pale grey with veins of blackish green running through. His cheeks were sunken in, and in several places the skin was pitted with deep open sores covered in dark dried pus. His hair was patchy on his head, looking like a field of dead grass that had been salted in random places to keep life from growing on it. His lips were ragged and uneven, like something had eaten them away in places, and he supposed that was very likely exactly the case. His gums were black and several teeth were missing, leaving the broken ones that were left to poke out in random directions.
For all these horrible details, however, he could clearly see that everything seemed to be healing. From his blackened gums several small, shiny bits of bone shown through that appeared to the beginnings of new teeth. A few of the pits on his cheeks looked like they were not so dry as they had once been, and where the pus flowed a little more freely the skin might have been knitting itself back together. The open patches on his skull had the slightest hint of peach fuzz to suggest a new head of hair in the future, even in the places where he had already been bald. And all of this was hours after Ringo and Charlie had first noticed that he looked to be healing. Edward couldn’t guess yet the rate that these changes were occurring, but he didn’t think he would look anything like this by this time tomorrow. Even the cuts on his fingers tingled like they were healing faster than they had any right.
“Jesus Christ in heaven,” Edward said. “This is insane.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Rae said. “So, you want to tell me everything you know about all this?”
“Lady…Rae, I don’t know jack.”
“Then why don’t you start by telling me anything you remember. Anything at all.”
Edward sighed and gave her the abbreviated version of everything he had remembered while in the shed and everything from the moment between waking up in the store and getting taken by Ringo. Rae said nothing while he talked, nodding occasionally as she rubbed the stock of her rifle. She held onto the thing like a child might a teddy bear, but Edward didn’t say anything about that. She didn’t strike him as the kind of person who would take it favorably being compared to a little kid.
“And that’s it?” she asked, peeking her head up to look over the side of the truck as it slowed to a stop. He was about to ask if they were at her place yet, but from his position he could see a stop-and-go light in front of them. It felt strangely comforting that, even with the apocalypse come and gone, things like traffic lights could still exist.
“It’s at least everything I remember,” Edward said.
“Well, none of that really tells me shit, except that whatever is causing you to regenerate apparently started some time last night or early this morning.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t give us a reason why,” Edward said. “Can I ask some questions now? Please? I think I’ve been in the dark long enough.”
“I’ll answer whatever questions I can, I guess, but I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”
“Then I guess you should start with…um, what the hell actually happened?”
“What which happened when?”
“Well, the end of the world. The zombie armageddon.”
Rae raised an eyebrow. “Zombie armageddon? That’s a new one. Why the hell would you call it that?”
“Well, that had to be what it was, right? The end of the world? Everything now is the post-apocalypse?”
“Jesus, that’s an exaggeration if I ever heard one,” Rae said. “I mean, yeah, things got bad back in those days. They say three-quarters of the world’s population was wiped out…”
“Holy fucking shit! Three-quarters? How the hell am I exaggerating, then?”
“Because, look around you.” She gestured around the truck, then remembered that he couldn’t actually sit up and look. “Or, at least think of everything you’ve seen so far. I know this is probably different than you remember, but you’re from fifty years ago. Of course things are going to be different. Different doesn’t exactly mean bad.”
“But…all the ruins outside that weird open perimeter circle thing…”
“Have been that way for as long as I can remember,” Rae said. “No change, not really. You’ve got some people living way out in the boonies trying to farm now, but otherwise there’s nothing new or different. Last I checked the world was continuing on just fine, no end in sight. And it sure as hell looks like it will continue that way for a long time.”
Edward shook his head, not understanding how anyone could miss the severity of what had happened. The world had changed drastically and into something he couldn’t recognize. An untold number of people throughout the world had died. He had no idea how someone could look at an event in history like that and not think it was the apocalypse. But he didn’t think he was going to convince this woman, and whether she was talking to him civilly or not right now he still didn’t think it would be a good idea to get into an argument with her while she was still holding a rifle in hand.
“Okay, so it wasn’t the end of the world. What do you call it, then?”
“We call it the Uprising, but I’ve never thought that was a very good term for it. Uprising implies they were downtrodden or something like that, like they were slaves that fought back. They weren’t. They were just people. They died, they got back up, they ate people. Those that they didn’t finish eating got back up, too.”
Edward felt a shiver at the matter-of-fact way she described it. “How is that even possible? Dead people getting up and walking. Was it magic or something?”
“Don’t be a moron. I don’t know, I guess there were probably some people that thought that at the time. Some people still do. Lot’s of people thought God was punishing everybody. Couple of religions sprung up because of it. It was a virus though. The Animator Virus.”
“So, it was like a plague? How did it start?”
“Don’t know. Occasionally you’ll hear new studies or news reports about it. Government keeps saying new things every so often. Most people don’t even bother with official explanations. Some nutjobs have got all kinds of conspiracy theories. But, I don’t know, I guess most people just don’t care.”
“Don’t care? Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong people in this time? How could anyone not care?”
“Easy. It was over fifty years ago. It’s history. Most people are too busy tryi
ng to pay their bills or get married and have kids or things like that. They can’t be bothered with wondering about some mysteries that are half a century old. It’s like…um, I don’t know, I’m not so good with history. It’s like people in your time would have acted about things that happened during World War I, maybe. The thing with the Nazis.”
“I think you may be thinking of World War II.”
“Maybe. But it’s something in the past that happened, it affected things, but it’s the past. Where the zeds come from is less important to daily life than the simple fact that they exist.”
Edward sighed. “Alright. So you don’t know where this Animator Virus came from, but it made the dead come back to life and try to eat people. The first I remember of this thing, it was starting somewhere around Chicago. Is that right?”
Rae squinted her eyes and looked up at the sky in thought. “Yeah, I guess that sounds familiar. Somewhere around there. Spread quickly, because people die and then rise so quickly after a bite.”
“Right, that much I was able to figure out from my memories. So what happened after that?”
“Spread across the whole country, then the world. I don’t know a whole lot about the ways different places fought against it. Most of that is military history, and while I guess I’ve always enjoyed that I never had much time for it. There are a few things everybody knows about: the Korean Nuclear Pact, the Battle of Atlanta, the Greater and Lesser Texas Purges. Mostly what I know is the things my parents told me. They lived through it, told me about all the local stuff that happened, taught me how to fight against it if it ever happened again. The zeds are still out there, as I guess you of course know, and they still bite. It could always happen again. My parents were sure it would.”
“And me? Are you expecting me to try biting you?” Edward asked.
“I’ve still got my rifle pointed at you, don’t I?” They both looked at the rifle at the same time. Her hands were relaxed on it, and it pointed off to the side. Rae readjusted it so it pointed at him again, and Edward had to fight not to smile at the way she blushed.
The Reanimation of Edward Schuett Page 6