by Jeff Hart
Alastaire slid into the seat beside me, and the driver slammed the door shut. I watched Tom through the tinted window and had to resist the urge to put my palm up to the glass, like a kid in some movie being taken away from her parents and sent to a sinister orphanage.
The town was quiet as we drove through it. I figured most people were spending their Saturday inside after what had happened yesterday. You know, being close to family, being quietly reflective, all that typical grief stuff. We drove past the school, which was surrounded by yellow police tape. Flowers, candles, and framed photographs had begun to pile up on the sidewalk.
It was a depressing scene. We were usually too busy tracking down the undead to stick around the site of the crime after an incident played out, so this was the first time I’d ever seen the sadness that follows. The mourning. Just like yesterday was the first time I’d ever seen a zombie talk. Right when I thought that I’d gotten used to the NCD lifestyle, or at least gotten accustomed to the grind of reading death imprints and telling my team where to start their hunt. All this—well, it was a lot to think about.
But something told me that now wasn’t the time to get reflective. The car was warm and mellow classical music was on the radio. Still, Mr. Bow Tie—Alastaire—made me uneasy. He wasn’t staring at me—he was too busy typing into his phone—but somehow I felt like he was observing me.
“I’m glad we have this chance to talk,” he said, his voice smooth as silk.
“Um, yeah. Me too,” I replied reflexively.
“What you did last night was rather impressive.”
I didn’t even know how I’d managed to knock out Chazz Slade, and I sure didn’t want to give Alastaire any inkling that I didn’t know what I was doing. I just let the compliment hang there, hoping that would be the end of the discussion.
“Do you think you could do it again?”
I touched my nose. “It was kind of painful.”
He smirked. “It gets easier. Trust me. Most telepaths wouldn’t be capable of such a feat, much less at your age.”
“Is he dead?” I asked. “Chazz, er, the zombie?”
Alastaire laughed, shaking his head. “Well, dead is relative,” he said. “But he’s as alive as his kind ever gets. Your action allowed us to preserve him for study. Thanks to you, we’ll be able to better understand what we’re up against.”
An image popped into my head of Chazz strapped to a metal gurney, a man in a blood-spattered white lab coat standing over him with an electric bone saw. Chazz looked terrified. I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the vision away. Was that just my imagination, or something else?
I’m not a big hospital person. The pungent antiseptic smell, the harsh lighting: it all just reminded me of my daily after-school visits with my dad as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. He was hooked up to all these machines and tried to joke and smile like he used to, but every day there was less and less of him until he was gone.
Alastaire put a hand on my shoulder as we crossed through the hospital lobby. I got the feeling that he was trying to comfort me, and that just creeped me out more, so I sped up my walk, his hand falling back to his side.
It was weird—as we passed the front desk, the nurse on duty didn’t even look at us. I expected Alastaire to check in or something, but he seemed to know right where he was going. Of course, I didn’t have a clue.
“What’re we doing here?” I finally asked as we continued down a hallway in intensive care.
A doctor filling out paperwork jumped at the sound of my voice. It’s like he hadn’t noticed us until I’d spoken.
My head was still achy, but I forced my mind to focus. Alastaire was radiating something. . . . It’s hard to explain, sort of like when you see a pan on a stove and can tell it’s hot without touching it. Whatever he was doing, it caused the people walking by not to notice us. Their eyes just passed right over us, like we were slippery. It reminded me of the way we handled Incident Management—guiding our cover story into the minds of civilians—except now it was as if Alastaire was directing the way people perceived our very presence.
Wait—Alastaire was doing what?
My breath caught. Oh my god. He was a telepath too. What kind of nasty things had I been thinking about him?
“We’re here to visit a particularly stubborn patient,” he explained, either not noticing that I’d just had a major revelation about his mutant status, or choosing to ignore it. “Up to this point, she’s resisted our cover story.”
The patient’s room we entered was completely dark except for the glow of the machines she was hooked up to. Alastaire closed the door behind us and I felt like I’d been locked in a room where some kind of séance was about to happen, the ghostly electric greens of the heart monitor floating like evil spirits around the bed of this shriveled, old gypsy woman.
This lady was little. Like, really little. Her feet poked up under the sheet about halfway down the bed. Yet even lying down and barely conscious, she had this air of authority about her. She had a tangled mop of frizzy gray hair, a big gold crucifix around her neck, and a giant bandage on her clavicle where one of our runaway zombies had taken a bite out of her.
“Ms. Hardwick,” Alastaire said softly, “we’re here to talk to you about yesterday’s shooting.”
“Pah,” the woman spat, and when her eyes snapped open I actually jumped back from the bed. They were bloodshot but laser focused, swinging imperiously between me and Alastaire. “That was no school shooting, young man.”
“Oh no?” Alastaire looked mildly amused. I didn’t think there was anything funny about Hardwick. The way she looked at us—at me, in particular—was like she knew our every secret, had judged them, and was totally disgusted. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to walk the halls of RRHS with that old wackadoo stalking around. It must have been impossible to get away with anything.
“I saw the devil in those children,” said Hardwick with grave certainty. “He has risen.”
Alastaire gave me a subtle nod, telling me that I should get on with bending Hardwick’s mind to our version of events. I widened my eyes at him, mouthing, Me? He nodded again and turned back to Hardwick.
“My dear,” he said to Ms. Hardwick. “What you’re suffering from is post-traumatic stress.”
Why would Alastaire make me do this when he was a perfectly good telepath himself, one obviously more powerful than me and without a psychic hangover? Was this some kind of test? It felt like it—like he’d been evaluating me, watching me, from the moment I got into his car.
I reached my mind out toward Hardwick’s. It felt like my brain had just run a marathon and now I was asking it to bang out a few more laps. I immediately started sweating, something that had never happened before when I used my psychic powers. I leaned against the railing on the side of Hardwick’s hospital bed, feeling dizzy. All I knew was if this was some kind of test, it was probably a good idea to pass.
As Alastaire went through the now familiar school-shooting narrative, I watched the words enter Hardwick’s mind. Or try to enter. If all minds have doors where information enters, Hardwick’s were locked, barred, and sealed over with bricks. Alastaire’s words just bounced off her mind.
I probed the cracks in her mental walls, looking for a place to slip in. She really believed that Jake and Amanda had been some devil-sent sign of the apocalypse. To change that in Hardwick would mean altering her most firmly held beliefs. I saw a vision of Earth bathed in white, holy light and a giant, stern-faced bearded man reaching down, collecting her, and pulling her up to heaven where together the two of them shot lightning bolts down at the unlucky scum who remained. These beliefs went deep. If I did manage to get her to believe our story, I’m not sure what would’ve been left of her personality. Would she be a vegetable? I had no idea.
I didn’t think I had the strength to full-on brainwash this old lady. More than that, I’m not sure I wanted to. Yeah, she was totally twisted, but I wasn’t cool with just wiping away a
person’s deepest convictions—even if those convictions were about the Rapture and how most teenagers were walking devil enablers.
I felt pressure building in my sinuses and broke off contact. I snuffed my nose clear and tasted blood. It was just a trickle, but it’d happened again. Another bloody nose.
“Save your stories for the man at the pearly gates,” Hardwick was telling Alastaire. “See how far they get you.”
When we left Hardwick’s room, another dark-suited NCD agent was waiting outside. This one was a member of Alastaire’s personal team.
“Don’t let anyone speak with her,” Alastaire ordered as we walked out. He had his hand on my shoulder again but this time I didn’t shake it off. It was the only thing keeping me steady.
Alastaire led me to the hospital waiting room and sat me down. He handed me a paper cup full of water and I drank greedily. I’d failed his test, and although I wasn’t sure what that meant or why I’d even want to impress this creep and his bow tie, I was still pretty disappointed. I’d always prided myself on this whole telepath thing.
I thought of the story of Fred Hardy, this valedictorian that’d graduated the year before the government pulled me out of high school. Rumor was that he’d turned into a total burnout. My sister said he’d gotten to college and suddenly found that he wasn’t the smartest kid in the room anymore, so he’d switched his major from engineering to keg stands, flunked out in his second semester, and now worked at some fast-food restaurant in the mall. I felt like Fred Hardy must have.
“You get people like that from time to time,” Alastaire said, sounding more sympathetic than disappointed that I’d failed. “Sometimes they’ve got mental walls that you just can’t get through. I didn’t expect that you’d be able to change her mind, so to speak.”
“So why have me try?”
Alastaire shrugged. “I wanted to see what you could do. You remind me a little bit of myself.”
I could tell he’d meant that as a compliment, but it made me feel worse than when I thought I’d failed some test. So I was just another guinea pig.
“In Harlene’s report, she mentioned you’d made telepathic contact with the male zombie fugitive. Is that true?”
I nodded, not sure why he’d suddenly changed the subject to Jake Stephens.
“Can you still feel him out there?”
“A little,” I answered. “I need an object or something that he’s touched to really focus in.”
Alastaire waved this off. “The physical connection is just a crutch. Once you’ve made contact, you should be able to maintain it.”
As soon as he said that, my mind came alive, as if it was suddenly eager to stretch its legs again. I swept across the astral plane, out of New Jersey, across Pennsylvania and—
What the fuck is on me? Is this a net? Did these bitches have a net?
I’m so hungry. They do not want to mess with me right now. Hitting me with their car was bad enough, but a freaking net?
Where’s Amanda? Oh shit, are those crazy girls seriously shoving her into their car? I should help. I should do something. But I’m so hungry.
If I could just get this fucking net off me, I could still totally eat that stupid clerk before he calls the cops and save Amanda.
I gasped, coming back to myself. I’d just been in Jake Stephens’s mind. Or what was left of it—it was a colder, more necrotized version of Jake than I’d peeked in on before, more like the zombies I usually tracked. For a moment, what he’d been feeling lingered: the heavy weight of the net he was covered in, the cold feeling of a wound in his side, an unnatural hunger that I hoped I’d never feel personally. Then it was gone, and Alastaire was looking at me expectantly.
“Well?” he asked.
“Nope,” I replied too quickly. “Nothing.”
I’m not even sure why I lied. Maybe after he’d forced me to play his little game, I wanted to rebel against Alastaire. If it were Harlene or Tom asking, I probably would’ve told them the truth. I trusted them, but not Alastaire. There was something wrong with him, like maybe he took a little too much pleasure in all this zombie hunting and mind screwing. Also, I really didn’t want him to start thinking of me as some kind of protégé. And part of me, well, part of me didn’t want to sell out Jake, even a gross version of Jake that was way too focused on stuffing his face. He was still just a kid like me, and if a zombie like Chazz Slade could slip through the cracks . . .
I shouldn’t think things like that. Jake would have to be tracked. Killed. I just didn’t want Alastaire to be the one to do it. I imagined Jake ending up like Subject Number Eleven, strapped to a treadmill for study. It wasn’t right.
Alastaire frowned at me. Now he was disappointed. A weird feeling came over me then. It was like a strange hand was slipping underneath my shirt, slippery fingers sliding up my spine. Except, it was happening in my mind. I flinched and pushed that hand off with all the force my mind could muster.
“Unh,” grunted Alastaire. He was watching me, his expression suddenly cold. He wetted his lips in this gross way that took too long and I had to look away. If they made hot telepathic showers, I’d have curled up in one right about then.
Alastaire stood up. I still didn’t want to look at him.
“You’re tired,” he said. “I hope you’ll feel differently tomorrow.”
I said nothing and he walked away without another word. I had to call Tom from a pay phone to get a ride back to the motel.
JAKE
I WOKE UP FLAT ON MY BACK WITH THE REMAINS OF A dead raccoon on my face. The carcass was still warm and from the bristles of raccoon fur stuck between my teeth and the sticky, dried blood on my cheeks and mouth, it seemed like a pretty solid bet that I’d eaten that thing and then dozed off. So, that’s my life now. Eating vermin and napping. Great.
Although part of me was glad that I’d apparently de-zombified this time by eating a friendly woodland critter. It was better than snacking on people. I guess.
My memory was all messed up. I remembered chasing that gas station attendant and getting hit by a car, and then I remembered getting attacked by a couple of teenage girls and winding up under some net. As for how I came to be lying on the concrete floor of a strange basement? That was the big mystery.
I sat up, squinting into the near darkness and spitting fur. Something moved next to me and I flinched.
“Relax,” whispered Amanda, who was kneeling beside me. “It’s just me.”
“Shit,” I whispered back, gulping a deep breath. “Where are we?”
“Basement of some house,” she replied, sounding a little uncertain herself. “Weird freaking place.”
“Weirder than the funeral home?”
“You tell me,” said Amanda, helping me to my feet. There was a scratching sound when we started to move, followed by a couple high-pitched keens and snarls.
Something was down here with us, and it wasn’t cool with company.
I looked around, my eyes now fully adjusted to the lack of light. The basement was unfinished and pretty much empty; some bricks and plastic tarps collected dust in one corner, a hot-water heater still in the box next to them. The place had an under-construction vibe.
Except I doubt the contractors had lined the far wall with locked pet carriers. A dozen sets of nocturnal green eyes peered out at me—possums, raccoons, a couple mangy stray cats. Some of them scratched at the cage walls, others sat huddled in the backs of their cages, hissing whenever Amanda or I moved. There was one cage just filled up with rats, the dark shapes climbing all over one another, searching for escape.
“Whoa,” I said. “This is some serious serial-killer shit right here.”
Amanda shook her head. “I think they eat them.”
I noticed a possum carcass next to my raccoon leftovers. So, they’d fed us. Part of me was glad I didn’t remember Amanda chewing through possum belly.
“Who are they?”
“As far as I can tell? A couple of crazy zombie lesbians.”
The ceiling creaked above us. I could hear two hushed voices having an argument upstairs.
“What do they want with us?” I asked.
“The mean one seemed disappointed she couldn’t eat us,” said Amanda. “The other one insisted they bring us back here.”
The arguing above us stopped, and the basement door was flung open. Someone turned on a light—just a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, which really added to the whole mass-murderer ambience.
I started looking around for something big enough to knock out a lesbian. One of those loose bricks would do nicely.
Sensing me tense for action next to her, Amanda touched my arm.
“Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t.”
“Seriously?” I whispered back. “Isn’t this a fight-for-our-lives situation?”
“If they wanted to hurt us, they could’ve done it already.”
Combat boots clomped heavily down the wooden basement steps. They belonged to a burly girl with spiky black hair. She was maybe nineteen and looked like she belonged to some militant punk rock band’s vicious mosher hall of fame. She was dressed in an old army surplus jacket, a nostril piercing connected by a chain to a gauge in her ear. And she was holding a crossbow—seriously. I was definitely reconsidering my whole hit-her-with-a-brick strategy.
“I take it this is the mean one,” I whispered to Amanda.
She nodded, her eyes on the girl who didn’t look at all pleased to find us standing upright and communicating.
“No talking,” she snarled, gesturing with the crossbow as she came down the steps. “Stand with your backs against the cages.”
We did as she ordered, most of the animals shrinking away as we came near. A particularly bold raccoon pawed at Amanda’s hair, but she gritted her teeth and pretended not to notice, keeping her eyes on the crossbow.
“If either of you fucking newbs tries anything shady, I will not hesitate to put an arrow through your brain. And believe me, you won’t get up from that.”