“What is?” Liddie asked.
“After fifty years, at least one thing is still the same. The government officials still act like spoiled brats.”
Liddie’s laugh felt like the first normal thing he’d heard since he’d woken up in the Walmart.
Chapter Nineteen
When Dana was seven, Edward and Julia had made plans to go to Chicago for a weekend with her. That had been about the time Dana had begun an obsession with dolphins, and Julia had thought it would be a good idea to take her to the Shedd Aquarium for her birthday. But it hadn’t been the dolphins and aquarium that Edward himself had been excited about. It had been the buildings of downtown. He’d spent all of his life in Wisconsin, and most of it just in Fond du Lac. Skyscrapers weren’t something he’d ever had a real chance to see. He’d briefly seen some of the towers in Milwaukee on the rare occasion he got to go see a Brewers game, but he knew Chicago would make Milwaukee look like a bunch of shacks. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so excited to see them. There had just been something about the idea that tiny people could really build things so huge. He never got to see them, however. He’d busted his foot pretty bad at work the week before Dana’s birthday. They’d had to skip Chicago that year, even though they all promised themselves they’d do it the next year. They never did.
That memory came back to Edward as the van drove through the new (or at least new to him) version of Stanford. There were several skyscrapers, all with designs and architecture he would have never been able to imagine. One even looked like a hundred-story pyramid. It was breathtaking. Unlike on the plane, it suddenly became a lot easier to forget his current situation.
It helped that Liddie Gates didn’t have the same severe and serious aspect as her mother. The young woman smiled at him the whole time they drove. She also didn’t take the precautions her mother had. There was no gun pointed at him during this journey, no notebook, and certainly no talk about preserving his soiled underwear.
“So, um, hi,” Edward said.
“Oh, hi! I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t really do a formal introduction. I’m Claudia Gates, but I prefer…”
“Liddie. That much I got,” Edward said. “I’m Edward Schuett.”
“Edward? Not Ed or Eddy?”
“No, Edward. My dad was never big on nicknames. A career military man. Everything always had to be exact with no shortcuts.”
“Well it’s good to meet you, Edward.” She held out her hand for him to shake. Edward didn’t take it. He just stared at it.
“Is there something wrong?” Liddie asked.
“It’s just…not a lot people have offered to shake my hand over the last twenty-four hours. Most of them have either tried to cage me or shoot me.”
“You don’t have to shake it if you don’t want to,” Liddie said, but she didn’t pull her hand back. The smile never left her face.
Edward hesitated, then took her hand. He couldn’t help but smile back.
“Can I ask you something?” Edward asked.
“Probably, but I reserve the right to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about if it’s something I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Are there a lot of things you’re not supposed to tell?”
“In the CRS? Of course. What else would you expect?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve ever heard of the CRS before today.”
“What, have you been living under a rock?”
“No, apparently I’ve been a zombie.”
“Oh. Uh, right. So what did you want to ask?”
“That thing back there. What was that? Between your mom and the doctor?”
Liddie’s smile finally disappeared as she rolled her eyes. “That horrible witch of a woman keeps making power plays and failing.”
“Uh, I’m assuming you’re calling the doctor the witch, and not your mother?”
“Oh, don’t make the mistake. My mom can be a horrendous bitch too when she wants to be, and that’s usually quite often. But the difference between them is that Mom is good at it.”
“I’m still afraid I don’t completely understand.”
“Dr. Chella wants Mom’s job, and has used every excuse she can possibly think of to get it. For the longest time, I was her pet reason.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can run circles around Chella when it comes to almost anything regarding the CRS. I grew up there. I’ve never even really been anywhere else. I know all the science about the reanimated and I know every theory, every computer. Hell, I could give you a reasonable prediction of what each scientist at the center will bring in for lunch. But I don’t actually have a degree in anything, so Chella’s tried to prove I have no right to all the responsibilities Mom sticks me with. But she eventually got shot down on that one by the president himself. She knew her reputation was on the line, so the next thing she decided to latch on to was Mom’s pet theories about reanimated evolution. Chella said there was no hard proof. Except now Mom has it, I think.”
“You think? If I understand all this Z7 stuff, and admittedly I’m not really sure that I do completely, then I’m all the proof she needs, ain’t I?”
“Well, yeah, if you’re actually a reanimated. You still just look like any other human to me.”
“The last thing I remember before twenty-four hours ago was being attacked by my apparently dead wife nearly fifty years ago. So you’ll pardon me if even I’m wondering just how human I could possibly be at this point.”
“Oh,” Liddie said. She didn’t seem to have anything to add to that.
Edward’s attention went back out the window. He stared for several minutes, trying to find more ways to associate this new world with the one he had known. There wasn’t a lot to see in the middle of the night, but everywhere he looked he saw more evidence that the world had moved on without him. The cars here were different, the architecture was different, even the design of the street signs was different. At least in Fond du Lac the city had maintained some semblance of the place it had once been. This city, however, had not really even been here fifty years ago. The van may have been much more comfortable, but Edward actually found himself feeling nostalgic for the sights from Ringo’s cage.
They passed a squat building with a bright sign out front. The name of the place read “Zappy’s” in shockingly bright blue letters surrounded by what might have been a bull’s eye.
“What is up with these Zappy’s places, anyways?” Edward asked. “Are they sort of like McDonald’s?”
“What the hell is McDonald’s?” Liddie asked back.
“Wow, never thought I’d see that day,” Edward said.
“So you really don’t remember anything of the last fifty years?”
Edward almost said that he didn’t, but he remembered the brief flashes he’d had in his dreams. He couldn’t be certain that they were memories, but that was what they felt like. It just didn’t seem possible that he could have been shambling around for nearly half a century and not have registered any of it.
He looked at Liddie and the expression of genuine curiosity on her face. She hadn’t asked the question so she could further study him like her mother had. She wanted to know because she honestly thought of him as more than just a scientific specimen.
“I kind of had flashes when I was dreaming,” Edward said. “Like the last fifty years really were just a dream or something like that. I don’t really remember anything other than that.”
“I’m sure that with all our know-how we can help you remember,” Liddie said.
Edward thought of the red tinge to his dreams. Bright red fading to maroon, like blood. He wasn’t sure he wanted to remember anything from that time. Maybe it was better to ignore it and pretend he’d just been in a really long sleep. A zombie Rip Van Winkle, maybe. But then there was that last memory of Julia biting him, and Dana. That memory, at least, he needed to find. He needed to know what had happened to them.
“Maybe,” Edward said. “I
s that really what you intend to do? Help me?”
“Of course it is. What else are you expecting us to do?”
“Dissect me?”
“What do you think we are, monsters?”
“How would I know?”
“Trust me, we’re not the monsters,” Liddie said. “We’re the ones who are making sure the monsters never come back.”
Edward was tempted to tell her that back where he’d come from the monsters had never really left, but it was already obvious to him that Stanford would be a completely different world than the one he’d already seen. She probably honestly believed what she said.
Edward, on the other hand, still had no idea what to believe.
Chapter Twenty
The world was red again, all other color sucked out of it. He felt like he’d just come from somewhere, someplace foreign and unfamiliar and full of confusion and pain. There was none of that here. He could sniff the air and catch something that maybe once upon a time he would have thought to be putrid, but now smelled like honey. The scent was all around him. It was intoxicating. It was comforting.
There were other forms around him, forms that he would recognize as being like him if he had anything like self-awareness. All of them shuffled down a street. Sometimes forms would break away from the group for some inexplicable reason, sometimes others would join them. There was no real pattern to the movements that he was capable of noticing, but he didn’t care. What he did care about was the new scent that had come to his nose from some light breeze. There was something else nearby, something like the forms around him and yet not like them at the same time. A scent that felt fresher. A scent that made his long-forgotten stomach try rumbling, even though it hadn’t quite been able to do that for a long time.
There were subtle shifts in the honey odor, and all the forms around him moved at once toward the new scent. Several of the forms at the edge of the group broke off and went in two separate directions while all the others drifted to either side of the street. With fewer forms so close to him he felt more sluggish. He would have said he felt a growing confusion, if he had even been capable of understanding what that word meant. Nonetheless there was still that honey scent in the air, ebbing and flowing and generally assuring him that this was what the horde needed for right now.
He had no way of comprehending time or how much of it passed as he stood there on the side of the street. All he knew was that the fresher odor suddenly became stronger. The honey scent changed ever so slightly again, and he began to move.
Something ran down the street. He didn’t know what this thing was supposed to be, although on some level he recognized that it was similar in shape and size to the other forms. It was like them and yet not at the same time. It had no honey scent, and therefore it was something he needed to attack.
It didn’t look where it was going. Instead it looked back over its shoulder as several forms came after it. They weren’t moving very fast, and there was no way they could catch it. They didn’t need to. The rest of the horde came out into the street. It didn’t know what was happening until it was already being ripped apart.
Edward ripped right along with all the others. He could feel the flesh coming apart under his hands as others tried to tear the pieces away from him, but he didn’t care. He had enough of the meat in hand to raise to his mouth and take a great big bite. His rotting teeth were still able to tear through the skin, although one chipped on a bone. He barely felt it. He didn’t even taste anything as the bits of the horde’s prey slid over his tongue and down his throat. It took only a brief time for the horde to reduce the thing to little more than a skeleton. Then Edward went back to shuffling down the street, reveling as always in that honey scent, and was not even aware that anything had happened.
It wasn’t like the movies. Edward didn’t wake up right away, sitting up straight in bed and screaming at the horrible nightmare he’d just had. He came out of it gradually, and his subconscious tried desperately to keep wakefulness from coming. Part of him might have been aware that he should be sleeping for much longer, that the mere two hours of sleep should not have been anywhere near enough for him to feel so rested. Another part of him, however, didn’t want to let the dream go. It had been comforting. It had been like home, completely unlike where he was when he came fully awake.
The room was uncomfortably small, and even with only the small bed that had been brought in it still felt cramped. There were no toilet or shower facilities. After all, if the few cryptic things Liddie had said when they brought him in late at night were any indication, this room wasn’t intended for a breathing human to live in anyway. It was simply the best the CRS had been able to set up for him on such short notice. The room smelled of disinfectant, but underneath that Edward thought he could still smell something comforting and sweet. Something like honey. Up until recently, another zombie had been in here.
He knew the fact that he could tell that should have bothered him, but he had other issues right now. Even if he looked like a normal human, had a heartbeat like a normal human, and had to eat (more or less) like a normal human, his bowels were still apparently closer to that of a zombie. He had soiled himself in his sleep.
He got up from the bed and grimaced as he stood. He’d stripped down to just his pants while he’d slept. Normally he would have slept in just his underwear, but he was pretty certain that somewhere in this room there were cameras watching him. He hadn’t wanted to give anyone a free show. That choice had kept the mess from getting on his bed, but instead it was all over the back of his pants. He could feel it sticking to his skin. He went over to the door, trying to ignore the unpleasant feeling all up and down the back of his legs, and knocked.
Liddie had told him to just let anyone outside the door know if he needed anything, that they would provide him with any food or take him to a bathroom or shower, that they would even provide him with entertainment once they had a more permanent room set up for him. Edward understood that the implication of all that, even if Liddie herself didn’t understand or at least acknowledge it, was that he was not able to leave the room on his own accord. Just to test that theory, he tried to open the door by himself now. It was locked.
There was an observational window in the door, but the view was blocked by a sliding panel from the other side. He could hear footsteps from the other side, and he took a deep breath as he tried to think how he would say what he needed. This wasn’t exactly a situation he had a lot of practice in, and he didn’t want to talk about it any more than he had to. Zombie virus or not, this was not something a grown man should have to worry about. He even considered maybe not saying anything and just pretending nothing had happened. He might save some face that way, although he realized that would only be for a little while. There wouldn’t be much time before the stink made his embarrassing situation quite obvious.
The panel slid aside, and Liddie smiled through at him. There were bags under her eyes, but nothing else about her made her look tired.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”
“Um, no. I think I’m done for now.”
Liddie frowned. “You only slept for two hours.”
“Well, I don’t feel tired.”
“So was there something you needed?”
Edward opened his mouth but didn’t say anything yet. Just what the hell was he supposed to tell her? “Is…is there someone I could speak to about something?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“No, I mean, uh, about something I need.”
“Right here. I volunteered to be the first one to look after you. Just consider me your liaison for any and all needs.”
Edward bit his lip. He couldn’t tell her. If he were talking to a man on the other side, then maybe he could say something, albeit in a very quiet manner with as many euphemisms as possible. Her mother would have been even better. That woman had, after all, already probed him for all the intimate details about this sort of thing. Liddie, on the
other hand, just didn’t seem like someone he could talk to about this.
“Really, I need to talk to someone else,” he said.
“Whatever it is, I can help.”
“No, not with this.”
“What, you don’t think I can do it? Whatever it is, I’m just as capable of taking care of the problem as anyone else around here. Or do you not trust me?”
“I’m not sure if I trust anyone around here yet.”
“Not even me?”
“I don’t really know you, Liddie. But you do seem more trustworthy than some.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?”
“Damn it, Liddie. It’s…it’s a personal problem.”
“Oh.” Liddie’s frown disappeared and her face softened. Even though Edward didn’t think there was anyone else in the hallway to hear, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Is it that one thing you had a problem with before?”
“Um, I’m not sure. Which one thing would that be?”
“The thing in your file. You know…the pants thing.”
Edward backed away from the door with a horrified expression. “I already have a file? And that’s already in it?”
“Look, it’s not a big deal. If that’s the problem, then—”
“No. I’m fine. Really. There’s nothing wrong.”
“Edward. It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”
“This isn’t right. I shouldn’t have to deal with this. None of this is right.”
“Edward, listen to me. It’s okay. We can take care of it. I can even make sure this doesn’t go in your file, at least not this time.”
Edward didn’t look at her for nearly a minute. She stayed on the other side, not moving, waiting patiently for him to talk again.
“This is all bullshit,” Edward said finally. He wasn’t quite sure what he was referring to at the moment. It could be his accident, or his situation, or just everything in general. Liddie didn’t ask for him to elaborate.
“I know it is. Let me help you fix it, okay?”
The Reanimation of Edward Schuett Page 12