Resurrection: A Zombie Novel

by Michael J. Totten

  The plague and its attendant destruction was such a tremendous event that it rewired her brain. So while she couldn’t remember the events, she sure as hell noticed the rewiring. She thought of an axiom from her psych class in college up in Seattle: neurons that fire together, wire together. Her professor used smoking as an example. Smokers make all kinds of associations with cigarettes. Drinking coffee, having a beer, getting in the car, stepping outside. That’s why it’s so hard to quit. Coffee, beer, driving, even stepping outside make smokers who are trying to quit think of cigarettes. A person suffering from amnesia who had no idea they were a smoker would still think of cigarettes if someone gave them a beer. That’s how powerful brain wiring is.

  If epic devastation wasn’t powerful enough to reroute her circuits, nothing was.

  She was no longer the same person she used to be. And while she couldn’t remember her transformation, she sure as hell noticed that she was transformed.

  Her sense of danger was more pronounced. She understood on a cellular level that required no explanation from Kyle or Hughes or anyone else that the entire planet was hostile, that resources had to be scavenged, that law and order were finished, that she had to fend for herself, that every single thing that humans had ever built anywhere—except perhaps Egypt’s great pyramids—would be ground down. She had internalized these truths and imprinted them into her being. Amnesia couldn’t change that even if she couldn’t remember it happening.

  But something else had also imprinted itself into her being. Something else had happened to her. Something aside from the plague. Something aside from the probable deaths of everyone she had ever known. Something aside from the fact that she’d never see her Seattle apartment again, never see South Carolina again, never see anybody she recognized ever again, and might not even survive the next twenty minutes. Something in addition to the fact that the world was in ashes.

  She sensed a secret knowledge buried somewhere inside that was banging on the lid of her subconscious and trying desperately to get out. She knew it as well as she knew her name was Annie Starling. But what was it? What was she forgetting? What on earth could it possibly be?

  She stared hard at herself in the mirror.

  Look, she thought. Look hard. The answer is there.

  But she couldn’t remember.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kyle liked and trusted cops, but he wasn’t at all convinced that Lane was a cop. What kind of cop would take people hostage and threaten to kill them for food? At least Lane’s goons weren’t waving their guns around anymore, and Lane contented himself for the time being with just barking orders.

  He told Kyle and Parker to unload the supplies Hughes and Frank had picked up at the sporting-goods store.

  “I’m sorry,” Kyle whispered to Parker while they unpacked the large backpack, “for taking your gun.”

  Kyle didn’t actually think he’d made a mistake when he disarmed Parker. He very well may have saved Parker’s life, along with everyone else’s. Parker didn’t see it that way and was still upset about it, and Kyle was ultimately on his side.

  Lane stood near the front door like he was guarding it, with Bobby and Roland armed at his side. Annie was washing up in the bathroom. Carol was hanging back in the walk-in cooler as usual. She seemed to like having a second door between herself and the outside. Hughes and Frank sat on the floor next to the beverage aisle in back.

  Parker didn’t respond to Kyle’s apology. He just removed what appeared to be night-vision goggles from the pack and set them down on the floor.

  “Well, what do we have here?” Lane said when he saw the night vision. “That is some fine-looking equipment.” He seemed to know what he was looking at.

  Kyle pulled the extra socks, gloves, fleece pullovers, and hats out of the bag and held them up. “Where do you want all this stuff?”

  “Leave it up here by the door,” Lane said. “All the equipment and guns will be kept here from now on. This area is off-limits to everybody but me, Bobby, and Roland. Got it?”

  “Oh, believe me, we got it,” Parker said.

  When they finished unloading the gear, Lane said, “Good work, boys.”

  Parker grunted and headed back toward the bathrooms. Kyle followed him into the gloom.

  “We need to get our guns back,” Parker said. They didn’t have to whisper now. They just had to talk quietly.

  “We can’t shoot them,” Kyle said. “It will be noisy. We’ll draw a hundred of those things down on our heads.”

  “Lane is our number-one problem right now.”

  “We can wait until—”

  “No. We’re not going with them on your boat.”

  Parker shuffled off farther into the back of the store. Kyle went with him.

  They could have just fled out the back, but Roland and Bobby had blockaded that door from the outside with a Dumpster. Supposedly they removed the wheels so it couldn’t be moved again, at least not from inside the store.

  “The old rules are off,” Parker said. “These people aren’t civilized. And frankly neither are we. Not anymore. If we don’t kill them—and I mean as soon as fucking possible—they’re going to kill us eventually.”

  “Lane says he was a cop.”

  “You actually believe that?”

  “Not really, no. But disasters change people. Were you like this before?”

  Parker said nothing.

  Kyle figured Lane would settle down once he realized the others weren’t a threat—as long as he could convince Parker to settle down and stop looking like a threat waiting to happen all over again. And it was possible that Lane was a cop. Everyone left alive in this world was wandering around in some kind of trauma. Parker was right that the old rules were off, so why should he expect Lane to abide by them any more than anyone else? So yeah, it was entirely possible that Lane once was a cop. Kyle sure hoped so. If Lane had been a cop, everything would be fine.

  * * *

  Hughes didn’t like or trust cops at all. But Lane was no kind of a cop. Hughes had asked what Lane thought of Chief Berenson, but there was no Chief Berenson. The police chief’s name was Anderson. As a bail bondsman, Hughes knew that.

  Lane was a liar. A thief. He took hostages. He’d probably killed people. And he was no kind of cop.

  That was for damn sure.

  * * *

  Lane wasn’t a cop, nor was he sure anyone believed he was ever a cop, but he didn’t care because he was charge.

  Bobby and Roland did what he told them to do when he told them to do it, but the truth was that Lane would be lost without them. He had a crew of six until a couple of days earlier. They were robbed at gunpoint of everything they had—their food, their water, their gear, their guns, everything. Then they were torn to pieces by a pack of hunters. They were unarmed and defenseless and scavenging for food in an abandoned house when a pack of them swarmed inside the front door and ripped apart four of his companions. The pack would have been no big deal if they still had their guns, but everything but their clothes had been stolen. The only reason Lane, Bobby, and Roland were still alive was because they managed to slip out the back while the shrieking screams of his friends and the hate-filled screams of those hunters faded away in the background.

  Not two hours later they came upon a massacre site. A small group of men had been overwhelmed by another pack—no, a horde—so large their guns couldn’t save them.

  But those guns saved Lane, Bobby, and Roland. They felt no compunction whatever in stealing guns or anything else from the dead. Nor did they feel much compunction about taking guns or anything else from the living. Not anymore. Better to steal than have your stuff stolen.

  Never again, Lane swore to himself, would he let anyone take his weapons away. There were new rules afoot. Rob or be robbed. Kill or be killed. Rule or be ruled. And don’t be a sucker.

  Lane wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t a sucker.

  He summoned Kyle to his place near the front door with a wave of his hand.
Annie followed even though he hadn’t summoned her.

  “So how are we getting to this fabled boat of yours?” Lane said to Kyle. “We can’t go in a vehicle. The roads heading north are too jammed.”

  Kyle opened his mouth to say something, but Annie interjected.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” she said.

  “I didn’t ask you,” Lane said. “But what? But what’s your suggestion?”

  That girl gave Lane the creeps. He still couldn’t remember how he recognized her, but a feeling rose in his gut that told him she was dangerous. The threat-detection radar in the lizard part of his brain wouldn’t shut up about it. She didn’t look dangerous. Not at all. She seemed smart and capable. Maybe that was part of the problem.

  “I think we should take bicycles,” she said.

  “Bicycles,” Lane said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Bicycles. We can weave around abandoned cars and ride faster than anything that tries to chase us.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Kyle said, smiling. “It’s a good idea.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Lane said.

  “Actually, you did just ask me,” Kyle said.

  It made sense, and Lane had considered the same thing himself, but there was a problem. “We won’t be able to carry as many supplies.”

  “We can carry enough,” Kyle said. “We make another run at the outdoor store up the road, get a few more huge backpacks, load ’em all up, and ride off to Olympia. Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. But I think we should wait until dark and ride up there by moonlight. We can get more night-vision devices when we pick up the backpacks.”

  Lane nodded. “I’ll send some of you up there on a supply run. And I’ll send Roland with you so you’ll have protection in case you’re attacked.”

  Lane still wasn’t sure what to do with all these people once they got to an island. That Parker character would have to be dealt with, of course, and maybe the big black guy too. The others were on probation. Kyle might turn out okay. He wasn’t stupid and he seemed okay with following orders. Frank wasn’t outstanding material, but he probably wouldn’t cause trouble. Probably.

  But something was up with Annie, and Lane wouldn’t know what to do with her until he knew exactly what it was. Why did he know her face? And why did she give him the creeps? He didn’t get the feeling he knew her from the distant past. He felt like he’d seen her somewhere in the past couple of days. But he’d hardly seen anyone the past couple of days. How was that possible?

  “Annie,” he said. “You and Kyle are on bicycle duty. Go out and find one for everyone. Bobby will go with you for protection.”

  “You want us to go now?” she said.

  “Yes, now.”

  “Isn’t someone taking the truck to the outdoor store?”

  “You don’t need the truck. Go on foot, find three bicycles, ride them back, then go out and find more. You’ll be fine. Bobby will be with you. You’re less likely to get attacked if you don’t take the truck anyway because you won’t make as much noise. There are rows of houses behind the store. You probably don’t need to go more than two or three blocks to find bikes.”

  “But—”

  “Girl. You do what I tell you.”

  She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed.

  She didn’t look dangerous. She looked like a scared college student. But some knowing part of his mind could not stop flashing a red alert whenever he saw her face. He studied her hard but could not figure out why he couldn’t remember.

  * * *

  Annie knew the real reason Lane sent Bobby with her and Kyle to scavenge for bicycles. Bobby wasn’t their bodyguard. He was Lane’s bodyguard. Lane didn’t want Kyle and Annie scavenging for weapons instead of for bicycles.

  Bobby unholstered his pistol with one hand and picked up two crowbars with the other.

  “Let me see one of those,” Kyle said and reached out his hand.

  Bobby jerked away. “You can have one of these when I tell you.”

  This wasn’t going to work, Annie thought. They didn’t need to like each other, but they did need to work together out there, especially if they were attacked. She approached Bobby slowly and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey!” Bobby said and shrugged her away. “Keep back.”

  This was going to be worse than she thought.

  “Let’s try to be civilized,” Kyle said. “We aren’t your enemy. Our enemies are outside. We all need weapons if we’re going out there.”

  “You can have one when I say you can have one,” Bobby said.

  “You keep your pistol,” Kyle said.

  “You’re goddamn right I’m keeping my pistol,” Bobby said, his upper lip curling.

  Annie wanted to argue but decided against it. Bobby would eventually settle down, especially if she and Kyle didn’t spook him by invading his space. She decided to be as nice as she could, to pretend she and Bobby were friends. If she acted like his friend long enough, it might become less of a lie after a while.

  “After you,” Bobby said and gestured for Kyle to go out ahead. Bobby was not going to turn his back on anybody.

  Kyle unlocked the front door and peered out. “Looks clear,” he said and stepped out. Annie looked over at Bobby. He motioned her out with his eyes.

  She stepped outside and was overwhelmed with the putrid stench of rotting trash. The odor was faintly detectable inside the store, but outside she could taste it.

  She looked out at a generic suburban street that could have been just about anywhere in the country—with strip malls, big-box stores, and fast-food joints—but absolutely everything was ruined. Windows were either broken or all boarded up. Pieces of glass crunched underfoot. No cars on the street. Trash blew in the wind. What looked like a used-car lot had exploded, its charred remains looking like the architectural equivalent of bones littering the parking lot.

  Everything was quiet and still. The setting just didn’t seem real, as if this whole thing were some kind of elaborate put-on. And where on earth were these things everyone kept talking about? The only one she’d seen—and an alleged one at that—was the man Frank hit with his truck not twenty minutes after Hughes had fired his shotgun at her.

  “I think I remember seeing a bike shop not far from here,” Kyle said. “Down that way, I think.”

  He pointed toward the east, or the direction Annie assumed was east. She had a decent sense of direction, but she still wasn’t entirely sure which town she was in or where it was in relation to everywhere else.

  “So let’s head that way then,” she said. “Better to get bikes from a store than from people’s garages. It’s quieter and won’t take as long.”

  “Bobby?” Kyle said.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “We should walk down the middle of the street,” Kyle said. “We’ll be a little more visible, but we’ll be farther away from the buildings. In case some of those things come out running at us.”

  “Those … things, as you call them … could be in these buildings?” Annie said. Most of the windows and doors were boarded up.

  “They could be anywhere,” Kyle said.

  “Enough talking,” Bobby said.

  So they walked “east” and said nothing. Just down the street a ways on their left was the blown-up car lot. On their right was an ex–Burger King. Up ahead were more strip malls and big-box stores, including a Target. There might still be items worth scrounging in there, she thought, except the windows were smashed in.

  They walked for a good twenty minutes saying nothing and hearing nothing, and part of Annie found the whole business exhilarating. Who would ever expect to see something like this? American cities and suburbs had always looked and felt permanent. On some level she knew they weren’t, of course—everything falls apart eventually—but it never occurred to her that they could slide into decay so rapidly. She certainly never expected to see everything disintegrate at once.

  She felt a few dr
ops of rain on her face, but only a few. The Northwest’s weather was bizarre. Some days it rained so lightly she could be outside for hours and not really get wet, while rainstorms in South Carolina could drench her to the skin faster than if she stood with her clothes on in the shower.

  Harder rains were coming, however, if it really was early November like the others were saying. The dry summer season was over and November’s rains were the worst. Soon the rain would fall without stopping for days.

  Life was about to become a lot more complicated. She loved the smell of fall, the earthy fragrance of mulch and dead leaves and coldness and rain, but that was absent now and replaced by the retch-inducing slum reek she’d once encountered on a trip abroad to India. Maybe the late-autumn rains would wash the stink off this town. She doubted the stench of rotting trash and—what else, dead bodies?—could last through the season.

  Nature was coming back fast and hard. How long before she saw bears in the streets? And how long before moss, grass, and even trees start growing on top of the pavement?

  “So what did you do?” Annie said to Kyle as they walked. “Before all this.”

  “Huh?” Kyle said. He heard her, but he hadn’t actually heard her. His mind was somewhere else.

  “I asked what your job was,” she said. “Before all this.”

  Kyle shook himself back to his immediate surroundings.

  “I worked in high tech. Programming computers. The job paid well, but it never really defined me. At least I didn’t define myself by my job.”

  “So what defined you?” she said.

  Kyle ignored her and stopped in the middle of a four-way intersection. The wind kicked up and Annie heard the darkened traffic signals creaking as they swung on their cable under the dishrag sky.

  “What?” Bobby said.

  Kyle said nothing for a moment. He just stood there with his hands on his hips and looked to the left and the right. “I think,” he said, “that I saw the bike store down there.” He pointed toward the right. Toward the south? The suburban business district continued in that direction just as it did straight ahead, but there was less debris on the streets to the right.