The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

by Derek J. Goodman

  “That is really eerie,” Liddie said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “It’s rather new for me, too,” Edward said. “And I’m still not even sure I’m doing it right.”

  “Come on,” Liddie said. “We’ll need to clean off the van before we—”

  “Not yet,” Edward said. “There’s something else.”

  He walked back down the road, but Liddie couldn’t tell why at first. Even Edward looked a little lost. He kept glancing at the side of the road, bending down to take a closer look at the bits of gore left behind by the exploding reanimated, and even occasionally sniffing the air. He finally went completely off the road at right about the place where the van had hit the reanimated, going twenty feet out into the desert to stoop next to some scrub bushes. Liddie followed, not sure what he was looking at until she was almost next to him.

  “Is it dead?” Liddie asked.

  “Oh yes,” Edward whispered. The last reanimated, the one she’d hit but hadn’t seen, lay in the dust. Its entire body was twisted at a terrible angle, and now that she was closer she could see that she’d asked a stupid question. Its head and chest were completely caved in so that Liddie couldn’t even tell if it had once been a man or a woman. Its clothes looked like little more than rags, although its denim jeans seemed to have held up remarkably well over the years.

  “So we don’t need to worry about it,” Liddie said. She turned to go back to the van, but Edward stopped her.

  “Liddie, wait. I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “With burying him.”

  “What? Why?”

  Edward stood up and glared at her. “What do you mean, why?”

  “It’s just a reanimated.”

  Edward reached down and felt around at the reanimated’s waist. He apparently found what he was looking for in one of the pockets and pulled it out, showing it to Liddie. It was a nylon wallet, badly worn with age but still intact. “If he was just a zombie, then why would he need this?”

  “He probably just had it on him when he died. Most zombies probably did.”

  “Liddie, do you seriously mean to tell me that you still don’t get this?” He opened the wallet and started pulling things out to hand to her. “Look at these. Look at all of these.”

  She looked at each one in turn. There were a couple of pay cards of the early design, the kinds they’d stopped making when she was just a kid. There were places on their backs for signatures, but the ink had long since been smeared away. There was a condom, its silver wrapper broken through in a few places to show the crumpled and brittle latex inside. There were some pieces of paper that Liddie didn’t recognize at first, but after closer inspection realized had to be battered old-style currency. A penny with a hole in it that had been tucked deep into one of the wallet’s pockets. A scrap of yellowed paper with the hastily scrawled words “For the birthday, Sat.,” followed by a telephone number. A folded photograph so faded that Liddie had to hold right up to her face to see what might be a young woman with long hair holding a dog. And the last thing Edward pulled out, a laminated card which he kept a hold of and read it out to her.

  “Timothy North,” he said. “Apparently from Seattle, Washington. This driver’s license expired, what, twenty-eight years ago? A long way from home, isn’t he? How do you think he got all the way into the Nevada desert?”

  “Well, reanimated migration patterns being what they are…”

  “Damn it, Liddie, stop thinking like you’re still in the CRS just for one second and think about who this man was. Because that’s what he was. A man. With a family, probably. Look at all that stuff in his wallet. Don’t you see any story there? Can’t you picture this man maybe going on vacation to Las Vegas or something? Maybe he had his girlfriend with him. Maybe they were going to elope, get married in some cheesy little chapel where the guy doing the ceremony is an Elvis impersonator. Anything like that, because whether any of that is true or not, this man had a story. It’s a story that got cut short. But what if this guy in Illinois is the reason I became a Z7? What if he can do that again? That means this man’s story could have started up again, but now it won’t. And because of that, excuse me if I’m going to take a moment to mourn him, because this man could have just as easily been me.”

  He took all the contents of the wallet back from her and carefully placed each one back where he had found it except for the driver’s license. Then he folded the wallet back up, put it back in the reanimated’s pocket, and got to his knees to dig a hole next to the body with his hands.

  “Edward, don’t do this,” Liddie said.

  Edward turned to her with a look of genuine anger. “Look, at this point I really don’t care if—”

  “You’ll rip your hands up if you try to dig like that,” Liddie said, and Edward’s expression softened. “Let’s go back to the van first and see if there’s anything we can use as a shovel.”

  They were able to pull apart a couple pieces of plastic from the interior of the van. They made terrible shovels and the grave ended up being only a foot deep, but it was enough to satisfy Edward. He added in what pieces he could find of the other reanimated, although neither of them could stomach doing that for long, and placed them next to the body. They then covered it up and used one of the makeshift plastic shovels as a grave marker. As a final gesture Edward leaned the driver’s license next to the marker. It wasn’t the kind of memorial that would last long enough for anyone else to ever find it, but for now at least they could both see that this was the final resting place of Timothy North, whoever he may have been.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Even though their route took them right past Salt Lake City, they didn’t try to go in. Considering the shape the van was in after the accident, they figured that stopping anywhere they didn’t have to might result in a whole lot of unwanted attention. It didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem, considering they thought they were in good shape until they at least got through Wyoming. They had enough fuel to go for a while, and they’d bought enough extra at Zappy’s that, as long as they ate sparingly, they would have enough until the morning. It was still a risk, considering the onboard map said there wouldn’t be any communities on their route after this until they reached Laramie, but Liddie told Edward it was a risk they should take. After all, Salt Lake was a mid-country city with a reputation for taking matters into their own hands, and if they recognized Edward as the Z7 they certainly wouldn’t wait for any official authorities to pick him up.

  Neither of them noticed the first problems with the van until they started through the Rocky Mountains. Edward thought he heard the engine cough a little, but the noise didn’t repeat for long enough that he almost started to think it was his imagination. As the roads became steeper the noise occurred more frequently. By the time they had nothing surrounding them but large ledges of rock on one side and steep drops into pine forests on the other, they both knew they were in serious trouble.

  They pulled over for a while for Edward to take a look under the hood, but that didn’t do them much good. Edward only had a very basic idea of how to fix a car, just enough that he had been able to keep his family’s car going long enough for payday to roll around so he could get someone else to fix it properly. Even that much knowledge wouldn’t help at all here, though. For starters, the van didn’t have anything in the way of emergency tools except for the spare tire and a jack. Vehicles like this had never been intended to go out this far from civilization, way beyond the motor pool and the CRS’s own mechanics. And even if they did have things to fix it with, Edward wouldn’t know where to start. This thing was fifty years beyond anything he had ever messed around with, and many of the components and gadgets under the hood were completely unrecognizable to him. Liddie couldn’t help out, either. All her expertise had been in administration, with a little bit of knowledge for scientific equipment. This kind of thing had always been done for her. At no time in her life had she even needed
to change a flat tire.

  Even with so little idea of car mechanics between them, it was obvious to see what had happened. From somewhere under various wires and tubes Edward pulled a putrid green finger, and it looked like there might be other pieces still in there. When they’d smashed the zombie, not all of it had ended up on the road and windshield. Some of it had gone through the front grill or under the severely dented hood. Edward took some time removing everything he could find, but several of the auto parts looked like they had been worn or broken from sharing their already cramped space with rotting body parts.

  They briefly debated what to do. There was nothing else they could do but continue along and hope none of the damage was severe enough to strand them before they got to Laramie.

  Through most of the Rockies, Edward thought fortune had smiled on them. It wasn’t until they started coming back down again out of the mountains that the simple engine coughs became more like burps, and soon were accompanied by groans and screeches. Liddie winced at every noise.

  “How much further do we have until Laramie?” Edward asked when the first barely-noticeable tendril of smoke appeared at the edge of the hood.

  “Thirty miles,” Liddie said. “Or at least I think. Whatever’s happening with the hood, I think it’s messing up the computer system, too. The map keeps shifting on the screen.”

  Thirty miles. Edward nodded. They could still make that. Even if the van broke down before they made it there, it should still be close enough that they could walk there. Or at least he could walk there. Unfortunately, Liddie might be a different story. The land around them was mountainous with very little else on the landscape except grass and the highway. There weren’t many places she could go for cover if zombies were around, and with night approaching again she might not see them coming. He could try keeping them away, but he still didn’t trust his strange little pheromone ability enough to test her life with it. Even worse, they’d been eating and drinking sparingly all day. That didn’t leave them with a lot of energy to head out for another thirty miles on foot. Edward was pretty certain he could manage if he had to, since the CRS had tested his abilities to continue on for a time without food or water, but again Liddie didn’t have that advantage.

  “Just keep going,” Edward said. “Maybe we can still make it.”

  In response, the van made a very loud and unhappy thump from under the hood. The smoke immediately got much worse.

  “Shit,” Edward said.

  “Keep trying to go?” Liddie asked.

  “That depends,” Edward said. “Does this model of van have any known tendency to explode?”

  “Um, there might have been a recall at one point…”

  “No, you know what? It’s probably much better if I don’t know. Looks like this is all she wrote. Pull over.”

  Liddie pulled over to the shoulder and killed the ignition. There was a noise like something breaking under the hood. Edward seriously doubted that anything would happen if she tried turning the key again.

  “Okay, so now what?” Edward asked.

  Liddie stared at the blank monitor on the dashboard where the map had been. “Well, we sure are not going to be getting to Illinois any time soon.”

  “And Laramie?” he asked. “Any chance we’ll find a way to continue on from there?”

  “I don’t really know,” Liddie said. “It depends if someone has a vehicle we can buy with what little money we have, which I don’t think is likely. And that would only be if the residents are friendly to outsiders.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe they wouldn’t be?”

  “This is mid-country. No one is friendly to outsiders. But I can’t recall hearing about anything worse than normal from around here. I guess we really won’t know one way or the other until we actually make it there.”

  “Do you think they would recognize me there?” Edward asked.

  “No more or less reason than anywhere else,” Liddie said. “I don’t know. Is there anything you can do to make yourself look less like you?”

  “Nothing more than what I’m already doing,” he said as he rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved since the escape from Stanford, but he only barely had any stubble. That was one of the bizarre little details of being a Z7, apparently. Before, he’d been the kind of person who could get five o’clock shadow half an hour after shaving. Now it took days before there was enough hair on his face to bother going over it with a razor.

  “Guess it will have to be enough,” Liddie said. “Come on, let’s get going.”

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Edward said, gesturing at the sky behind them. The sun was already low over the mountains.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “For all we know, if we come in after dark they’ll mistake us for reanimated and aim for our heads. But what are we even going to do until then?”

  “We’ve got a little bit of food left,” he said, “but maybe we should leave that until the morning. You know, make sure we’re as full as we can be before the walk. Thirty miles on foot is not exactly going to be easy.”

  Liddie nodded. “So what then?”

  “We should probably use the van again as shelter tonight, but for now it should be okay if we build a fire, shouldn’t it?”

  “Won’t that attract reanimated?”

  “I’ll be able to tell if any are coming, and maybe even get them to go away. Come on, what do you say? We can use it to keep warm for a while, maybe even find a stick we can sharpen and roast stale hamburger patties over an open flame.”

  Liddie smiled. “Like they used to do back in your time when people went camping?”

  “Yeah, just like that. Well, no, except for the hamburger patty thing. Not exactly traditional camping food.”

  “Do you even know how to start a fire?”

  “I know how to pretend I know how to start a fire. Does that count?”

  Liddie laughed, and they both got out of the van to search the terrain for burnable wood. It wasn’t easy, but after some searching Liddie found the very old remains of a wooden fence that might have once marked the borders of someone’s property. They brought it back to the road and set it up on the shoulder, being sure to keep it far enough away from the grass to prevent a brushfire. Actually lighting it was a hassle. Edward remembered seeing people start fires in various outdoorsy ways on television and in movies, and he even had a vague recollection of some of the tips he’d been taught back when he was a boy in Cub Scouts, but none of it was easy. It took them both a long time of messing around with the wood and cussing it out before they finally got a moderate fire going. Liddie actually went as far to skewer one of the burgers, bun and all, on a stick they had found. She thought the idea was hilarious.

  To Edward’s surprise, he couldn’t help but smile along with her. He had to admit it. This was actually kind of fun. For the moment they could forget why they were out here in the first place and all the bad things that had happened up until this moment. The CRS seemed like a long time ago, and all the obstacles that were still in their path felt far off. As they sat side by side in front of the fire, watching the sun vanish behind the Rocky Mountains while eating their ridiculous burgers-on-a-stick, Edward actually felt a little bit at peace.

  “You want the rest of this?” Liddie asked as she pulled the final hamburger from her stick and fished the meat out from the well-done bun.

  “Sure.” He took it and ate it slowly, staring all the while at Liddie as she licked ketchup from her fingers. She smiled at him and watched him right back as she ate the bun. They were both sitting cross-legged, and Edward suddenly became aware that she was close enough for their knees to touch. It gave him a little thrill to have her so close. She saw where he was looking and put a hand on his knee.

  “Is this really what camping was like back then?” she asked.

  “Kind of. I didn’t get to do it a lot. I’d always hoped to get out and do it more once Dana got a little older. Do people not do this at all anymore?”<
br />
  “Far too dangerous,” Liddie said. “I wouldn’t dare sit out here in the open, in the dark, if you weren’t around to do that thing. Have you had to use it at all, yet?”

  “A zombie moved by somewhere to the north of us a while ago,” he said. “But I think the wind was wrong for it to get a whiff of us.”

  “It’s refreshing,” she said, “being away from all the people. Being alone.” Something about the soft way she said the words made him look into her eyes. She stared back, and Edward felt a flutter in his chest. He hadn’t felt anything like this since he’d first started dating Julia, that moment of anticipation when he thought a relationship was about to take a new, unexpected, yet welcome turn. She leaned closer, just enough to give him a hint at what she wanted, and he matched the movement. Closer together, so close, but Edward couldn’t quite make himself move across those vital last inches. He wanted to, he really did. The thought of Julia was still there, though. His wife, the one he’d never been able to even give a funeral.

  Something about him must have given away his thoughts, because Liddie leaned away and the moment was broken. “You’re still not ready, are you?”

  “For a moment there I thought I was. But I guess maybe I’m not.”

  Liddie nodded and scooted a few inches away from him. Edward felt a small emptiness the instant she moved away. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What happens after we get to Winnebago?”

  “I don’t know. Unless we can find some sort of ride in Laramie, that might just be a long time off yet.”

  “Suppose its not. Suppose we luck out and get a vehicle and make it all the way to Winnebago by tomorrow night. What happens then?”

  Edward shrugged. “We find this man and hope it’s not all some sort of weird trap, and hopefully he can give me some answers.”

  “All right, assume that. We’re there, he has all the answers. And after that?”