“I don’t think so. I’m leaving here. My friends inside are coming with me. And all my friends surrounding you are, too. If every single person out there doesn’t put down their weapons right now, then I will not have any problem with them eating you.”
All she gave in reply was a choked sound. He had to imagine the rest of her reaction. Right about now she was probably looking around herself and realizing she was no longer the one with the upper hand. While he’d been talking to her, he’d also been talking to every zombie within a two or three mile radius. He hadn’t been able to bring them all in—they’d become too spread out for that—but he’d been able to call back most of them. Through the pheromones he could tell that a few were still shuffling toward the Culver’s, but at least thirty others were in a ring behind Chella’s men. Every one of the Merton people had been so focused on keeping their guns aimed at the windows and doors that they hadn’t even paid attention the zombies quietly coming up behind them. Some of the zombies had gotten very close, up to almost ten feet.
Chella finally got enough of a hold of herself to speak again. “This is stupid. My people can take out these things before they can attack us. You’re bluffing.”
“I don’t think they can. Rae knows the ways of Merton pretty well, and she doesn’t seem too terribly afraid of them.”
“There no way you could do it without losing some of your zombies,” Chella said. “I saw the way you treated that creature back in the lab. You really do think of yourself as one of them. You wouldn’t put any of them in danger.”
“Maybe you’re right. I wouldn’t dare let most of them get hurt. The key word there, though? It’s most.”
A simple thought, a command released onto the wind, the scent of honey intended for one zombie and one alone. With the walls of the Culver’s in the way it took a moment for that one to receive the message, but it could still smell Edward through the open windows. There was a shriek through the phone, then it cut out as gunshots echoed outside. Everything went silent for a second, then there was screaming.
“Everyone hold your fire!” Chella shouted. “For the love of God, do not shoot!”
“This is it,” Edward said. “Let’s go.”
He stood up and walked to the door. Everyone else stood along with them, but they were all hesitant to move.
“Um, what exactly just happened?” Luke asked.
“Not exactly a good time to ask questions,” Rae said. “Just take advantage of it.” She started to follow Edward.
“Wait, what are we going to do with her?” Cory asked, pointing to Larissa with his rifle.
Rae stopped and went back to her. “A promise is a promise. But you stay in here until we’re gone. If I ever see your face again I’ll blow it off your head, got it?”
Larissa nodded.
The rest of them followed Edward out the door and stopped at the ATVs. Most of the Merton people had moved over to this side of the building, but Edward had made the zombies shadow them the whole way. All of them looked scared as all hell, but none so much as Dr. Chella. Her phone and a handgun were on the ground at her feet, but it didn’t appear that she’d had any chance to turn around and use the gun. The walking corpse that had once been Billy Horton was behind her, his hands tightly gripping her arms and his mouth only inches away from the skin of her neck. He looked like he was bleeding from his shoulder and side, the results of shots the Merton people had gotten off before he’d grabbed her. Edward had to strain to keep him in that position. The shock of being shot combined with the smell of fresh prey right in front of him was making Horton confused and hungry, but as long as nothing went wrong Edward thought he could keep the zombie under control.
“Everyone, put your weapons down,” Edward said. Everyone from Merton hesitated, most of them looking at the zombies creeping up around them.
“What exactly do you think is going to happen?” Chella asked. “We will find you.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Edward said. “You don’t really want me. You want what you can learn from me. And if that’s all you want, all you need is a trip to the library.”
Dr. Bloss made a yelping noise like a small dog with its tail stepped on. Edward held up his hand to him in a stopping gesture. “It’s the only way to get them to leave us alone for good. We can still go on if we just have you, can’t we?”
“I…I think so.”
“Then it’s just like that,” Edward said. “You get everything in the library, we get to leave and go in peace. And when I say we, I’m mean all of us.” He gestured at the zombies gathered around them.
For a moment Dr. Chella looked like she considered it, then she smiled. “No.”
There was a click, and Edward felt a handgun pressed against the back of his head. Edward didn’t dare move, but everyone else turned to look at the girl who had snuck up behind them.
“Dr. Chella,” Larissa said. “I hope you still intend to pay me.”
“Consider yourself as getting a bonus,” Chella said.
“Where did you even get a gun?” Rae asked.
“Shit,” Cory said. “Rae, I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance to clear all the weapons out of the emergency supplies.”
“Now you guys are all the ones that need to put down your guns,” Larissa said. “Consider them ours now.”
Edward caught Rae’s eye. She should have been scared or worried at a moment like this, but all Edward could see was that she was pissed. He took a deep breath. He had a feeling that if he wanted to keep control of the other zombies in the next few seconds, he was really going to need to concentrate hard.
“How many times to I have to tell people?” Rae said. “Nobody…takes…my…Spanky!” Edward attempted to dodge to his right just as Rae brought up her rifle. It erupted in gunfire even before she had it fully brought to bear on the girl, but that was enough. Edward spun, trying to see what was happening, and watched as blood exploded from Larissa’s stomach. It also brought his face dangerously close to Larissa’s handgun. She convulsed, pulling the trigger and sending a bullet right in front of Edward’s nose.
That was enough to make him lose concentration.
Dr. Chella jerked herself loose just as Horton went for her neck, and the instant she was away the nearest Merton merc brought up his rifle and shot Horton in the head. Had it not been for that, Edward still might have been able to keep hold of the other zombies. But the sudden burst of pheromones from Horton caused all the zombies to moan at once and back away from the scene. The Mertons all saw this as their opportunity.
“Fire!” Chella screamed. The Mertons opened up on their targets, but not all of them were very good shots even at close range, and one or two made the terrible mistake of not going for headshots. The zombies came at them, and the air was filled with screams and moans and blood and exploded pieces of reanimated brains and skulls.
Edward dropped to the ground, feeling several bullets fly over his head. Next to him Rae’s people also opened fire on the Mertons, but even though they were right in the open almost no one shot back. The Mertons all had their hands full.
No, stop, Edward tried to say through the pheromones. Everyone stop, don’t do this! But for several seconds it all continued. That was all the time it took for the entire fight to run its course. The gunfire ended, and Edward looked up at the carnage around him.
Most of the Mertons were dead, but so were most of the zombies. A few of the Mertons had been shot and were trying to crawl away from the creatures they were sure would smell their blood and try to rip apart their flesh, but Edward had regained enough control to keep the zombies from going back into a frenzy. He could smell new pheromone scents being added to the air too, as a few of the Mertons twitched on the ground from their zombie bites. Edward looked over at Rae’s group, but they seemed okay. Jojo had been grazed on the shoulder, but that was all. They all crouched there on the ground, shocked by the sudden beginning and end to the violence. Only Rae moved, walking over to the gutshot Larissa by the
door. The girl didn’t look like she would last for very long.
“And just what the fuck was it I told you?” Rae said, then stuck Spanky in Larissa’s face. Edward had the sense to turn his head away before she pulled the trigger.
“Dr. Bloss, are you okay?” Edward asked. He had huddled among Jojo, Cory, and Luke, but he poked his head up to look at Edward.
“That was, um, interesting,” he said. Then he went back to huddling.
Edward stood up and moved among the bodies. So many dead, both human and reanimated. He couldn’t help but feel like he should have somehow been able to stop this. If he had been able to keep better control over the zombies, or if he had handled the situation better, or else maybe…
He stopped in mid-thought as he saw who was sprawled out on her back right in front of him in the parking lot. Horton hadn’t managed to bite Dr. Chella, but her own security detail had succeeded in doing the damage the zombie couldn’t. Her hand was mangled and there was a little blood seeping from underneath her, but Edward had no idea how bad the wound was. She looked up at him, her face still in shock and her eyes not exactly focusing on him.
“Help me,” she whispered.
“Why?” he asked.
“Please…shot.”
Rae walked over to join him. She pointed Spanky at the woman’s chest, but he motioned for her to turn it away.
“Do you think she’s going to die?” Edward asked.
“Probably, unless she thought to have other people like a medic nearby in case she needed them. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.”
“I have a better question, then,” Edward said. “Does she deserve to die?”
“Don’t ask me that,” Rae said. “You’ve got more of a history with her than I do.”
Edward knelt down by Chella’s side. Her breathing looked shallow, and the pool of blood under her still grew. “You were going to have me killed, Chella. Or experimented on, or turned into a weapon, or whatever. Liddie wouldn’t have died if she didn’t want to save me from all that. None of these people would have died if you had just left it alone. All because you thought I was a monster.”
He wasn’t sure if she understood him right now, but he felt the need to continue. “Do you still think that? Am I the monster here?”
Dr. Chella barely managed to croak out the word. “…yes…”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Edward said. “Since in my mind it’s the other way around.”
He took her broken hand, raised it gently to his mouth, and bit.
Rae fidgeted by his side. “Are you sure that was what you wanted to do? Even after everything that has happened, you didn’t strike me as the kind of person that could kill someone.”
“That’s not me killing her. That’s me saving her,” Edward said. Dr. Chella began to shiver, and he left her to finish the change while he helped the others pack up.
Chapter Forty One
As much as Dr. Bloss wanted to stay in Winnebago now that the immediate threat was over, both Edward and Rae decided that would be a bad idea. Even with Dr. Chella gone, both the CRS and Merton would still be looking for them. They were at least able to pack up the most important parts of Dr. Bloss’s research. Then they all headed north.
There was a lot of talk over the next several days about what to do next. Rae kept by her word to help protect everything that Edward and Dr. Bloss intended to do. After all, the attack in Winnebago had been proof enough of what some people would do to get what Dr. Bloss could create. She offered the rest of her crew the chance to leave, but they stayed. They were loyal to Rae down to the last. Edward thought that was pretty impressive for someone who had originally been a lowly gate guard.
The going was tough. Dr. Bloss had to frequently stop off in towns to check on his “contacts,” although he still refused to divulge any further information about them. His contacts at least kept the money flowing. They needed it if they were going to try remaking Dr. Bloss’s lab somewhere else. The journey was even further complicated by the zombie horde that followed them. Edward insisted on bringing every zombie they could find. There was no telling which ones might react to Dr. Bloss’s theoretical treatment. Any chance for bringing just one other person back and giving them a second chance on life was enough for Edward.
Weeks passed, and they continued searching for the right place to stop. When they stopped for the night Rae would often go off by herself to scout ahead, leaving Edward to look after the horde and the others. Sometimes he could sleep, sometimes he couldn’t. He still had occasional memories that mixed in with his dreams, but they no longer had that awful red tint. Sometimes he dreamt of Julia or Dana or Liddie. At first these dreams were nightmares. As time passed, they were not.
It was one of these latter dreams that Rae woke him from one night nearly a month after the events in Winnebago. One moment he was with Liddie, hugging her and wishing things had turned out differently while she assured him everything would be all right in the end. The next Rae was shaking him awake. The sun had just started to rise, but all the others were asleep yet accept for Jojo, who was on guard duty for the horde. All the time they’d spent with Edward had calmed the zombies’ disposition and they could often be allowed out of his presence for hours at a time without starting to look at the rest of the group as a snack, but it still paid to have someone watching and making sure.
“Edward,” Rae said as he sat up from the bedroll he’d laid on the open ground. “I think this is it. I think we’ve found the perfect place.”
Edward followed her without saying anything. He trusted her judgment completely, but he was still surprised when they came over a hill and looked down to where she was talking about. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Edward said. “When we said we were going to find a place for a new lab and possible colony to turn zombies to Z7s, I was kind of thinking…”
“Yes, I’m sure I can guess what you were thinking. But what I’m thinking is that there would be no place more fitting that this. Come on. Tell me I’m not right.”
He couldn’t tell her that. Further in the distance he could see the ruins of yet another town, abandoned to time just like so many other places they had passed, but this was farther away from still occupied towns and cities. There would probably be plenty of supplies and building materials to find there. But the town was not what Rae meant. She meant the huge block of a building immediately at the bottom of the hill. It was the empty remains of an old Walmart.
“It would provide plenty of shelter,” Rae said. “Plenty of space to keep the zombies, and parts of it could be built up into better living areas once there are more Z7s. This could be it. This could be your new zombie colony. What do you say?”
He nodded. All his facial muscles worked into a smile, and for the first time in far too long Edward Schuett laughed.
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The Reanimation of Edward Schuett Page 28