Nicky Hui-Chang sat in the prison’s tower with James Brenner, trying to spot the zombie he had pointed out. There were so many, and it was hard to tell most of them apart. There were a lot of blank eyes and cut faces. The binoculars brought them so close to Nicky’s face it was unnerving, even though she knew they were in a safe location. Zombie after zombie after zombie filled her view.
“Okay, he’s standing upright again. That should make him easier to spot. His tie is electric blue,” James spoke beside her, his own pair of binoculars pressed against his brown eyes.
Nicky kept scanning, looking for electric blue. Although brown was the predominant colour, the crowd offered every shade of the rainbow and then some; not all of them were covered in dried blood. Here was the white of a bandage wrapped around an arm, there was the neon orange of a construction worker’s vest, the blue of a Toronto Maple Leaf’s jersey, green of a punk rocker’s hair, yellow of a small child’s rain slicker. All these zombies had been people once, and although it was possible to forget that at times, something always popped back up to remind you.
“I don’t-” Nicky started to say just as an electric blue tie came into view. “Oh wait, there. I think I got him. He looks like that actor, Isaac Reynolds, from that show. What’s it called? Something Star I think.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s Blazing Star. No, Shooting Star, that’s it,” James named the full title. “And you’re right, it does kind of look like him. You know, that show was filmed in and around Leighton. It’s possible he is the actor from it.”
“Maybe. So what am I watching for?”
“Just keep your eye on him, I’ll tell you when he does it.”
Nicky and James continued to watch the zombie in silence. He seemed to be acting like a normal zombie; shuffle left, shuffle right, shuffle left, shuffle forward, shuffle back. Although many of the zombies stayed pressed against the walls, clawing their fingers off and getting crushed by those behind them, the farther from the walls they got, the more they thinned out. The ones in the back seemed to realize the futility of pressing against the massive stone walls, but continued to mill about just in case an opportunity presented itself. James had been taking Nicky up into the tower for an hour or two every day for the last week. Zombie Education, he called it. He told Nicky about how a lot of things were kept from them, things like the true capabilities of the zombies, but he couldn’t tell her everything at once. And some things needed to be shown rather than told.
As Nicky watched the actor-look-alike zombie mill about, she remembered the first thing she was shown about the zombies. Never, under any circumstances, under-estimate or think you know a zombie. That day, James had directed her attention to a woman in a purple tracksuit. He had asked Nicky to describe the zombie, how she would classify it, how she would deal with it. The woman just shuffled in circles like most of the others. She wasn’t focused on anything, she was slow, and she was clumsy. Nicky classified her as the dumb type, the kind you can just jog around with ease. James had timed this meeting well. It wasn’t long after she said this that a wall patrol came by. The woman in the tracksuit suddenly became more vibrant. The moment people showed up on the wall, she dashed toward them at top speed. She leaped onto the backs and heads of other zombies, running across them as if they were even terrain, then leapt high once reaching the wall. The wall was much too tall for the men to be in any danger from the woman, but Nicky got the point. Just because a zombie looked slow and stupid from a distance, didn’t mean it couldn’t be the most lethal of the pack once it caught your scent.
The actor-looking zombie finally did something out of the ordinary, the thing that Nicky had originally been looking for until James had told her that he was standing upright. The zombie stopped walking and bent at the waist, almost folding himself in half.
“Is he…” Nicky couldn’t quite tell because of the other zombies wandering in the way. “Is he pawing at the ground?”
“Yup,” James confirmed.
“Why’s he doing that?”
“We think he’s trying to dig, but can’t quite recall how such a thing works,” James told her. “He was spotted doing it a few days ago, and we’ve been keeping an eye on him since. He’s been getting better, managing to claw up a few chunks of dirt every now and again. We’re going to put him down soon, but I thought you should see first.”
Nicky knew that by ‘put him down’ James meant a sniper’s bullet to the head. “What’s the point? I mean, why is it so bad that he’s digging?”
“Because even though the walls are deep, there is a possibility of the zombies managing to dig underneath them. We don’t want him teaching another zombie that might figure that out.”
That was lesson two, that the zombies could learn from one another. The simplest learning for them was their own reactions to the presence of living things. They learned that if a large chunk of the mass surged in one direction, there was something alive over there. Some of them had learned from others that attacking the wall was pointless, and a few had begun to learn that if one zombie was shot, they should move away from him. Some cases were exceptional though, when a dumb zombie would learn a more complex task from a smarter zombie by watching him do it enough times. On one side of the prison, they had started to have issues with the zombies learning to climb on top of one another. If they had kept that up, they might have built a zombie pyramid large enough to get over the wall. Several of the armoured trucks and the bulldozer had gone out there and begun running the zombies down, while men on the walls picked them off with bullets. Since then, if they spotted an undesirable behaviour in a zombie, they put it down. Digging was certainly one of those behaviours.
“Hey, James,” another guard in the tower spoke up, pulling them away from their binoculars. “It looks like Roy is making an appearance today.”
At first, Nicky thought that Roy must be one of the survivors in the prison. However, when James walked to another side of the tower that looked away from the building, she knew it was something else. All the guards gathered over to the same bank of windows, ignoring their duties in order to get a look. James reached back for Nicky’s hand and led her to the front of the pack.
“Who’s Roy?” Nicky wondered as James put his binoculars back over his eyes.
“He’s a zombie,” James said as he scanned the treeline across a small field. “We call him Roy because that’s his name. It says so right on his name tag.”
“He’s near the boulder,” another soldier informed everyone.
Nicky lifted her binoculars to her face. The boulder wasn’t hard to find; it was a massive slab jutting out from the trees. Standing next to it, was a zombie in a white lab coat. Even at a distance, Nicky recognized the style and colour patterns of the nametag.
“He’s one of the scientists,” she said to no one in particular. Everyone up there probably already knew that.
“Yup,” James confirmed. “He was actually part of the crew from the school, but got separated on the way out. At least, that’s what they say. We think he managed to follow them here.”
“Do you think that’s why he’s showing himself today? Do you think it’s because the helicopter’s coming to pick them up soon?” one of the other guards wondered. For the last several minutes, they had been hearing the sounds of two transport helicopters making their way toward them. They knew they were coming today, but only a handpicked selection of guards was to assist with transporting the scientists and their gear from the garage to the roof. It was made quite clear that everybody else should stay the hell out of their way.
“Why does he have on a riot helmet?” Nicky noticed the black armoured bucket with the face shield.
“Because he doesn’t want to get shot in the head,” James answered.
Nicky at first thought this was a joke, but when she pulled her binoculars down and looked at the others, she realized it wasn’t.
“We saw him put the helmet on,” one of the guards who noticed her confusion filled her in. �
�He strolled up to another zombie that was in full riot gear, plucked the helmet off his head, and put it on his own.”
“So what are you saying? That he knew the only way he could be killed was by being shot in the head?” That was a hard fact to swallow.
“Yup,” several people, including James, replied.
“He seems to be more intelligent than all the others,” James continued. “One of the things the scientists did tell us is that a zombie who eats anything, especially protein, will take longer to decompose than one who doesn’t. Roy here seems to know that too.”
“How do you know he knows that?” Nicky asked just as Roy began to cross the field.
“You may find out.”
Everybody watched as Roy approached the zombies. He stopped near the edge of them and looked up at the tower. He was looking directly at them. It seemed that Roy knew they were there, watching. He turned his head away and surveyed the zombie hordes. It looked like he came to some sort of decision and walked up to another zombie. It was the actor-looking zombie, the one trying to learn how to dig. Roy grabbed his arm and began pulling him back across the field. On the way, he stopped and grabbed another zombie’s arm, a huge brute of a man. Both these zombies were pulled along by Roy back toward the large boulder. Once he reached it, he shoved the two through the bushes, and they disappeared.
“What was-” Nicky began to ask, but she was shushed.
Roy turned and looked up at the prison again. The choppers were much louder now; they were about to come in for a landing. Nobody turned to watch them; they were all too interested in Roy. Roy seemed to be watching the helicopters land though. As the blades spun down, it looked like Roy made some sort of vocalization. At least, his mouth popped open and his throat moved, but with the helicopters, the distance, the glass between them, and the constant noise the other zombies made, it was impossible to hear him. Another zombie appeared out of the woods: this one was female, slow, and missing her entire left arm as well as three fingers of her right hand.
“There she is,” James said in a nearly inaudible whisper. “She’s how we know what Roy knows.”
Roy walked over to the female zombie and grabbed her remaining hand. As they watched, Roy chomped down on the female’s remaining thumb, as well as a sizeable chunk of her hand, and ripped it off. Roy then turned to watch the helicopter some more as he chewed and then swallowed the hunk of meat. Nicky didn’t know whether to feel repulsed, or intrigued by this development.
“Zombies don’t bite other zombies,” she finally said, “there’s no point.”
“Exactly,” James agreed. “But he’s not just biting her, he’s actually eating her. She used to have two complete arms. This is how we know that Roy knows he’ll last longer by feeding. It’s easier to cannibalize another zombie for decomp-padding than it is to catch something living.”
“Why is he so smart?” this was actually asked by another guard, although it was in the front of Nicky’s mind as well.
“We don’t know,” James admitted. Those were the words he said, but Nicky thought that James at least had an idea. One that he didn’t want to say within present company.
They watched Roy watching the helicopters. He took another bite out of the female zombie, taking the last of her fingers, before the chopper blades started up again. As the sound of the helicopters receded, Roy disappeared back into the woods. Nicky pulled her binoculars away from her face, letting them hang on the strap around her neck. James did the same.
“Has anyone gone into those woods?” Nicky wondered.
James shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. Those woods are very thick, very tightly packed. There’s no way we could get vehicles in there, and a team of heavily armoured men would be in far too much danger. The tight quarters would give the advantage to the zombies, and if Roy can understand armour well enough to put on a helmet, he may know how to pry a man out of it.”
“I take it you’ve tried using the snipers on him.” Nicky couldn’t see how they wouldn’t if a simple zombie pawing at the ground deserved one.
James nodded. “He stays just far enough away that his head is a tough target, and even if we do hit it, the shots aren’t powerful enough to get through his helmet.”
“What about bombing the woods?” They had a grenade launcher lying around somewhere.
“We don’t know how deep in he is, or if he maybe moves to the left or right once he’s in there. Usually he comes out by the boulder, but he’s been spotted in various locations along the edge of the woods. We don’t have nearly enough ammo to blast away the whole place.”
The guards watched a moment longer, and then drifted back to their proper posts.
“We should head back inside. I’m sure someone in one of our sectors is looking for us.” James headed for the stairs.
“Isn’t someone always?” Nicky followed him. She took one last look around the tower. It was an entirely open space, not unlike a lighthouse, with windows on all sides. Men stood at each of these windows, watching the goings-on of the people inside the grounds and those of the zombies outside. Nicky knew most of these men. She was happy to see that the number of people on their side, James’s side, outnumbered the people on Keystone’s.
***
Nicky had just finished diffusing an argument between two men in her sector when another one broke out. With a sigh, she headed down the line of cells to see what this one was about. As she walked, she had to avoid all the things that had spilled out of people’s cells onto the walkway. Things like toys, hair ties, string, scissors, empty cans, plastic utensils, and bits of paper were often forgotten, abandoned, or outright discarded. People had gotten into the habit of leaving their shoes and boots lined up outside their cells, to keep from tracking dirt into them. They had begun to think of the individual cells as their homes and they were keeping them clean, but not the walkway outside of them. Nicky would have to call a meeting about that soon. She was hoping she could relate the walkway to lawns and sidewalks, and that it was their responsibility to keep the walkway in front of their own cell clean, even if everyone else was using it. She felt sorry for Victor and Marcy who were in charge of the first floor. Every time something fell off one of the higher floors, that’s where it ended up; more than once striking someone. They had been lucky so far in that no one had fallen, or worse, jumped. Nicky tried to push things away from the edge with her feet as she went by them.
The arguing was coming from a cell that was shared by two old men and one old dog. If the cell Georgia lived in could be called the hen house, then this was definitely the buzzards’ nest. Nicky walked up to the cell and knocked on a small piece of wood strapped to a bar. The wood had been the idea of a resident on the second floor. He had noticed that when people approached someone’s cell, they didn’t have anything to knock on politely if they weren’t noticed right away. Now, nearly every cell had one. At the moment, the buzzards’ nest was occupied by its two human residents. The dog was probably outside being walked by the two old men who lived a few cells down. The buzzards sat on the lower bunk beds across from one another with a cooler in-between. On the cooler sat a chessboard. When Nicky knocked, neither of the old men took notice, so she cleared her throat loudly.
Upon seeing her, one of the men immediately pointed at the other and shouted, “He cheated!”
“I did not!” the other shouted back.
This was a common argument between these men, although which one was cheating seemed to change every time. Nicky sighed and stepped into the cell, getting a better look at the board. The man doing the accusing, Eugene, was playing as white, while Burt, the man being accused, was playing as black. The black had checkmated the white, but it also had both its bishops on black squares, an impossibility without cheating.
“Burt, you cheated.” Nicky pointed out the bishops to him.
“Ha!” Eugene threw his hands up in victory. Both men then hunched over and began to reset the board.
“Next time, can you try
to keep your voices down?” Nicky asked as politely as she could. These were the kind of men who didn’t like to be told what to do, especially not by someone younger, female, and Asian. “Mrs. Lemcke’s headaches can sometimes be set off by noise.”
“Oh yes, sure, I didn’t realize I was disrupting Mrs. Lemcke. Of course, I’ll keep it down. I can’t say the same thing for him though,” Burt said, pointing a pawn at Eugene.
“Please convey my apologies to Mrs. Lemcke. I will certainly keep quiet and do my best to keep this one silent as well,” Eugene then said, waving a knight in Burt’s direction.
“Thank you, sirs,” Nicky smiled and left the cell. Just the other day she had discovered that the buzzards were sweet on dear old Mrs. Lemcke, and had been finding ways to use that ever since. And the bit about the headaches wasn’t a lie either; the poor woman was plagued by them, usually getting at least one bad one a day. Nicky had placed her in a cell down one of the quieter halls, hoping it would help, and the buzzards had no idea their voices couldn’t carry that far. Although she was tricking the old men, it was better than their never-ending arguments disturbing those who could hear them.
Nicky walked to the end of the block and found a quiet hall in which to think for a moment. She was still trying to process the odd behaviour of Roy the zombie. She hadn’t yet had a chance to talk to James in private about his thoughts on the matter.
The radio on her belt crackled, ending her seconds of peace.
“Nicky? You’re needed in the medical centre.” The voice over the radio was that of Dr. Owen. During the last week, he and Nicky had been spending time together whenever they could. Enough time that she no longer referred to him as Owen, which was his last name, but as Edward. They were friends, but Nicky sensed something more was growing between them. The timing was the absolute pits; however, there was no way she was going to put the brakes on. This radio call, though, wasn’t to chat or hang out. If she was being called to the medical centre, it could only be for one of three reasons. The first was that someone thought she might be sick, or worse, infected, and had ratted her out. This was unlikely. The second was that a patient from her section was down there and was asking for her. This was a possibility, but also unlikely. The last, which was probably what it was about, was a secret meeting of the rebels. Rebels. The word still sounded strange and wrong to Nicky.
Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) Page 21