by Guy James
“How did you get me in here?”
The dog sniffed.
“Figured as much,” Lorie said.
The seam pulsed, igniting the pain in all of Lorie’s injuries at the same time.
“Yes, I’m going, I’m going.”
She turned back to the door and looked at the seam.
She turned back around again.
“How did you get me in here?”
Lorie walked away from the door and the seam pulsed again, more painfully this time.
“Hold on,” she said. “Hold on.”
She went to the other side of the basement and around a corner. The Akita followed at a distance, growling.
Lorie rounded another corner. Snow was blowing in from somewhere.
The seam pulsed again, but at the end of this pulse, it flickered.
Then she heard it—the unmistakable shuffling of undead feet—many, many undead feet. Then the moans began.
The seam flickered and dimmed.
The Akita barked.
Lorie turned and dashed to the door.
She wrenched it open and peeked outside. The coast was clear, and—
The seam relit…and Lorie couldn’t believe what it was now leading her to.
The Akita barked.
“A path forged of light. A path wrought from the—”
Lorie shook her head, and snapped out of whatever state she had been in.
“This is our way home,” Lorie said to the dog. “Let’s go.”
She walked to the snow plow and the Akita followed.
The air was better outside and Lorie breathed more freely.
Pushing all thoughts of fuel and locks and keys out of her mind, Lorie took hold of the handle and pulled.
The door opened. Snow fell from the roof into the driver seat.
Lorie peered inside.
The plow was empty.
The Akita jumped inside and stood in the passenger seat.
“You’ve done this before?” Lorie asked. “Do you have the keys, too?”
The Akita barked.
Lorie got inside and pulled the door closed. The keys were not in the ignition.
“So…then…do you know how to hotwire a car?”
The Akita sniffed.
Lorie looked in the glove compartment, around the floor mats, and in the storage areas between the driver and passenger seats. There were no keys there.
The Akita barked.
Without thinking about it, Lorie reached up and flipped down the sun visor. Keys fell, jangling, into her lap.
Biting her lip, Lorie tried one of the car keys on the key ring. It didn’t fit. She tried another, and it did.
She turned the key, and the snow plow roared to life. The gas gauge bounced up and down until it settled at half full.
“Unbelievable.”
She almost said something about her luck, then changed her mind.
She got out of the cab and cleaned off the plow’s windows and roof. The plow was in a narrow driveway, pointed at a street.
When she was done, she got back into the driver’s seat, pulled the door closed behind her, and took off her backpack and put it in her lap.
Lorie checked the contents of her backpack. She took out the can of Coca-Cola. It was dented, but intact.
She brought the can of soda up to her face.
The Akita barked.
“Just a second,” Lorie said.
Lorie turned the can sideways and pressed it against her bruised cheek. It stung. She brought the can around and held it against the back of her head. The cool can dulled some of the pain, but Lorie found the exercise pointless, so she put the can back in her pack and turned to her new canine companion.
“It’s warm in here,” Lorie said. “Nice to have the heater on, isn’t it?”
The Akita barked.
“Yeah,” Lorie said, “it’s painful after being outside in the cold for so long.”
Lorie’s skin stung and her eyes and nose felt like they contained sharp icicles. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what would happen when the icicles melted.
“How are you not cold?”
The Akita looked at her.
“What’s your name, anyway?” Lorie checked the Akita’s collar.
“Nila,” Lorie said. The Akita barked. “That’s a pretty name.” The Akita barked again.
“A pretty name for a pretty dog. Okay, I hope you get along with cats...”
Nila growled.
“Well, I’m sure we can work on that. Are you ready to plow through some zombies?”
Without waiting for a response from Nila, Lorie put the snow plow in drive, set the windshield wipers to a slow setting, and eased her foot off the brake pedal.
She pulled out of the driveway, into the road, and stopped. The rearview mirror confirmed that she was pointed north.
She re-checked the doors to make sure they were locked. Then she set her sights on the throng of zombies at the end of the block. Through the tangle of zombie limbs, Lorie managed to make out the street signs. She was on 17th Street and Eighth Avenue.
“Still a long way to go,” she said. “But we’ll get there. I can see the path—” she turned to the dog, “—and I know you can too.”
She turned back to the road. Her foot hovered over the gas pedal for a brief moment, then, she took a deep breath, focused on one of the seams that held the world together, and gunned it.
108
UNMARKED BUNKER, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, U.S.A.
“Why did you capture me?” the vegan asked.
“I saw what you were,” Dr. Zamirsky said. “You have many of the telltale signs of infection, though they are more subdued in you than is normal. I couldn’t resist my curiosity, so I brought you back here.”
“I can’t say it has been unpleasant talking with you.”
Dr. Zamirsky smiled. “I’m glad to know that you’re enjoying this. It’s been a great pleasure for me so far. May I ask you about the cross you wear around your neck?”
“Sure,” the vegan said.
“So you are religious? A Christian?”
“Yes, I am a Christian. I find meaning in the symbolism of Christianity and many of its tenets, but I’ve begun to realize that I wear the cross more as a connection to my grandmother. She was a devout Christian and the cross belonged to her.”
“So the cross is a symbol for you,” Dr. Zamirsky said.
The vegan nodded. “Yes. I am spiritual as a Christian, and in my own way too. I believe in peace, nonviolence, and in a unique role for each being on the planet. I think that we all have a role to play, but it is often unclear what that role is.”
Dr. Zamirsky coughed up some phlegm, but rather than getting up and spitting it in the sink, this time he swallowed it. “People need their symbols and patterns—anything that will organize the randomness of life into some arrangement, arbitrary or not. As a species, we don’t deal well with uncertainty and the unknown.”
The vegan stared at him. “Everyone needs principles.”
Dr. Zamirsky nodded and cleared his throat.
“What about you, Vladimir,” the vegan said, “do you believe in God?”
“Certainly not, but, much like you, I choose to believe in a certain order in nature, and in balance. My life’s work is the return to balance. And, it appears, my life’s work is complete.” Dr. Zamirsky smiled wistfully. “I wonder what I will do next.” He shook his head. “I’m nostalgic already.”
“So you believe this was your role, to destroy the world?”
“Depopulation,” Dr. Zamirsky said, “is the greatest pursuit. For me, it is my only pursuit. I have avenged our own sins against this planet. It is Christian, I think.”
“It definitely is not Christian. You’re responsible for the death of millions, maybe even billions of people, and you have no remorse?”
“None. I did what was right for the world. I never sought any recognition for it. I don’t need or want to be remembered. I’ve made
the world a better place, and that’s all the reward I’ll ever need.”
“It’s a horrible thing,” the vegan said, “killing all those people. They all had unique lives and unique roles to play.”
“Oh come now, their unique roles are being played out now, in Desi’s proliferation, in death.”
The vegan sighed. “I don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye.”
Dr. Zamirsky pursed his lips. “Do you consider me to be your enemy, Randy?”
“Yes,” the vegan said.
“Would you like to kill me?”
“I don’t think that I could like the act of killing.”
“But you would kill me if you had the chance?”
“Yes.”
“Do you consider an earthquake, or a tornado, or a flood to be your enemy, Randy? I assume based on your vegan creed that you are an animal lover. Do you consider carnivorous animals to be your enemy? How do you feel about these natural destroyers of human and animal life…enemy, or no?”
“No.”
Dr. Zamirsky nodded and folded his hands in his lap. “What distinction are you making between me and these other natural killers that keeps me from being categorized as a force of nature? That’s all that I am, Randy…a force of nature living out my role. I think that you seek to destroy evil, but I’m afraid you will not find it here. There is only nature, of which I am an integral part. Death is necessary, and I have brought it in spades.”
“Yes, death is necessary, but you have taken it to abnormal proportions. Natural disasters and animals do not kill in such high numbers. Natural plagues have killed a great number of people in history, but not like this.”
“What qualifies you,” Dr. Zamirsky said, “to judge that the plague I have directly and indirectly created is not within acceptable, natural proportions?” He smiled. “I’m not aware of any applicable guidelines, and people certainly don’t keep themselves within any guidelines when they multiply beyond the limits of reasonability and destroy their environments, forever eradicating countless life forms. Why do you condone that?”
“I don’t. As far as judging what you are doing as evil, that is what my instincts tell me. And, I believe that for some reason, I was supposed to meet you, so that I could stop you.”
“At least you’re honest, Randy. I appreciate that very much. But tell me this: what is there left for you to stop?”
The vegan licked his lips and looked at Dr. Zamirsky. He opened his mouth to say something, looked down at the bracelet around his wrist, and shut his mouth again.
“Forgive me for being so abrupt,” Dr. Zamirsky said. “Please permit me to ask you another question.”
“Alright.”
“Do you hate Sven?”
“No,” the vegan said, “of course not. He helped me.”
Dr. Zamirsky shook his head in distaste, and then a sudden grin broke through his disapproving expression. “He helped you? Helped you? No, no, no. If you hate me, then you must also hate Sven. He is as I am—a bringer of death. You see,” he paused, “it was I who saved Sven when Sven fell outside the Wegmans store in his heroic effort to save Jane and Lorie. Then again it was also I who allowed the zombies to enter the store in the first place.” He shrugged. “I had to see what would happen, but I wasn’t ready to lose Sven so quickly. I am a scientist. I believe in controlled environments. And Sven, Jane, and Lorie…I saved them because they are much like I am. We are all kindred spirits.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I saved Sven,” Dr. Zamirsky said, “because he is a natural predator, a catalyst for Desi. She creates the human automatons, and he cuts them down and runs from them, accelerating the progress of the virus.”
“But that’s counterproductive to your goals. If he kills the infected, they can’t spread the virus to others anymore.”
“That, Randy, is where you’re wrong. Well, technically, you’re correct in your second statement. But as to your first statement, it is not counterproductive at all. You see, Sven’s strength, and Jane’s and Lorie’s, is the ability to survive. They cling to life so forcefully… Well, you’ve met them, so you know. I was only able to watch from afar, but it was magnificent. Sven’s basis for being a catalyst that you’re missing is twofold. First, the number of infected that the three of them actually kill is negligible. They cannot, on their own, stop the spread of an outbreak due to the sheer number of infected humans that they are up against. Second…” Dr. Zamirsky looked at Randy and smiled. “Do you now see where the answer lies?”
109
CHELSEA, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
The snow plow lurched forward, slid slightly, and then found traction on the icy road. Freezing snowflakes pelted the windshield and were swept away by the plow’s wipers.
Gritting her teeth and trying to recall the shadow of a feeling that behavior was associated with, Lorie accelerated toward the zombie mass.
The Akita barked.
“Excited, huh?” Lorie said, glancing at the dog that had rescued her. “Me too...in a sense.”
Lorie’s whole body hurt, and she couldn’t regain any of the excitement that she had felt on the prior evening.
“This isn’t fun at all,” she said, her voice a monotone. “Zombies aren’t fun at all.” She sighed. They were the words that she was supposed to say, but she was supposed to say them for a different reason. She was supposed to be scared of zombies, to fear them, as any normal person should. Now they neither scared her nor afforded her any excitement. “Looks like you finally cured me, Dr. Westreich, if by stripping all emotion from me. Touché Herr Doktor, touché.” She was not amused by her own cleverness at the phrase, and she was aware of the lack of amusement.
“Maybe it’s better this way, Nila.”
The distance between the snow plow and the zombie mass closed, and the Akita’s barking transitioned to a low and steady growl.
The seams of the world withered, deteriorating into points of light that fell away, then snapped back into full force. Lorie understood that the seam along which she had run had brought her here. The fall had been a necessary step in the process to get to the snow plow, and the snow plow was how she would get home. The seams of the world that she saw pulsed with this understanding.
The plow moved along a particular seam, the brightest one in Lorie’s field of vision.
Lorie saw the energy off Nila’s growl travel from the dog’s mouth, through the windshield, and down to the seams, where the energy was sucked into the world.
The zombies that Lorie saw in front of her, toward whom she was moving, were all marked. The pain of her injuries floated away.
There was an all-encompassing calm just before the snow plow reached the zombies. Even Nila stopped growling for a moment.
Then there was the inevitable contact, the one that the world had drawn Lorie into, in an inevitability that Lorie understood with more clarity than she had ever understood anything in her life. Everything was easy now. Everything could be conquered. And everything would be.
The flesh-rending, bone-snapping impact seemed to Lorie to be drawn out in time, as if it were happening in slow motion. Zombies were torn apart and their parts were thrown, twitching, in all directions, over, under, and around the plow. Some zombies were tossed, relatively whole, to the windshield. They clung there for a time, obstructing Lorie’s view of the road. She didn’t need to see the road, though, so long as the seams popped up and shone through the physical reality around her…and the seams did just that.
Lorie kept the snow plow moving along the seam, which plotted her journey through the zombies.
The plow pressed onward, crushing bones and tearing them from their sockets, destroying the decaying flesh of the freezing undead.
Lorie and the Akita traveled north. Their progress was uneven and agitated by the masses of zombies through which they drove, but the seam that Lorie saw burned bright, and she followed it.
As she drove north on the island of Manhattan, Lorie’s mind occasio
nally turned to the shaking that the trip was imparting to the can of soda. She intended to drink the Coke, but not now, because she didn’t want to break her concentration. Now, after all the shaking, she would have to wait a while before opening it even after she got to where she was going.
“Maybe I won’t wait,” she muttered. “What’s a little fizz after a day like this?”
110
UNMARKED BUNKER, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, U.S.A.
“Yes,” the vegan said. “I think I understand now. Sven doesn’t serve the outbreak by killing the infected. Wow.” The vegan shook his head, open-mouthed. “He serves the outbreak by running from it. He spreads it, because the infected follow the uninfected, so they follow him wherever he goes. It’s his will to live that brings death to others.”
Dr. Zamirsky clapped, grinning. “Precisely. The elegance of the phenomenon is remarkable.”
The vegan stared at the floor. “Striking.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it. Sometimes I wonder if I should have predicted this phenomenon, rather than merely discover it in the field. But I have made peace with that. It is obvious now, in retrospect, and I think that is because it is the kind of understanding that is clear in hindsight, and hardly visible before the fact.” Dr. Zamirsky shook his head. “And why shouldn’t they be catalysts? There are many such catalysts throughout the world…catalysts of death. They’re everywhere—death rows and bad neighborhoods are full of them, and not just bad neighborhoods. I live in a wonderfully coveted neighborhood, in a high-gated community that prides itself on keeping the lower class undesirables on the outside of the gate.” He shrugged. “That’s all gone now, and it’s for the best. Catalysts are everywhere, they inhabit all walks of life, and they come in various shapes and sizes, as the contrast between Sven and Lorie demonstrates. I’m sorry…I keep congratulating myself too much. It’s hard to resist.”
The vegan sat in silence for a moment, and then said, “So are you saying that I’m a catalyst, too?”
“You tell me, Randy. You did say that you walked a long way to get to the Wegmans.”