Zombies of the Gene Pool

by Sharyn McCrumb

  That was one thing fandom had taught her. Within its ranks she had met many talented people who could have made a fortune illustrating comic books, designing dresses, developing computer games… but. She sighed, remembering the frustration she had felt in her relationships with her fan friends. After years of stymied friendships and bitter romances, she had learned that you cannot give people ambition as if it were a virus. It is not. It is a genetic trait, and either it is waiting deep inside you to evolve, or else it is entirely absent, and it cannot be imparted to someone full of talent but lacking the drive to succeed. Nothing that anyone can do-not praise, or scolding, or work on one's behalf-can make them try.

  Marion had watched her brilliant acquaintances fritter away talent that she would have killed for. The comic book creators answered endless pages of correspondence on their computers, ignoring their own deadlines, while their artistic creations died of neglect. Another gifted friend scrapped her dream of becoming a costume designer in favor of a new boyfriend who wanted to go and live in the wilds of Oregon. The computer whiz went home one night and put a bullet through his head.

  Edward Arlington Robinson, thought Marion, mentally acknowledging the quote. When life became painful she always turned to literature. That was how she had become an English professor; it had been the ultimate escape from a marriage that she later compared to two years in an opium den. Only Jeremy hadn't done drugs; he had done dragons. To a sober outsider the addictions had seemed similar and equally incomprehensible.

  Marion had met Jeremy when they were undergrads. He had been a computer science major, and she was a smart girl with enough personal problems to keep the psych department busy for years. She was overweight; she had no idea how to manage her thick, curly hair; and she came from a cold and repressive family. Batting a thousand, thought Marion in retrospect. Hello, Middle Earth! She had possessed all the qualities necessary for psychological emigration: she had been rejected by the world, and she was perceptive enough to know it. So she left. She still went to her classes-well, most of the time-and her parents received dutiful letters that discussed the weather and asked after the cats, but Marion was gone. She had found the real people, and joined their ranks.

  The real people. Another literary reference. She wondered if Frederic Brown had ever realized the enormous impression his short story made on young egos. It was a simple fantasy story, probably suggested by the coincidence that began the tale: you are humming a song, and suddenly that very song comes on the car radio. The story's hero discovers that most of the people in the world are not real, they are like walk-on players in a film. Just there to set the stage, to create an illusion of reality. But a few people are real, the characters for whom the drama exists. Those people think and feel and care about things; everyone else is an automaton who ceases to function as soon as a real person leaves the scene. The reason the song came on the car radio was that the driver humming the tune was a real person, and he was able to will things to happen.

  It was an excellent fantasy story; Fredric Brown was one of the best. But to the troubled adolescent Marion that story was not just an entertaining tale, it was a serious philosophy that explained her feelings of alienation.

  When Marion read that story, she knew at once that she was one of them. She knew that she could think and feel, that she was more alive somehow than most of the bubblebrains in her dorm. So that was it. They weren't real. She didn't exactly believe that they were robots, or hallucinations, but on some deeper spiritual level she felt that she possessed something that they lacked. In medieval times, she might have termed it a soul.

  Armed with her new understanding of the world, Marion neglected her classes and her correspondence in favor of the search for more real people. Every now and then she would find one- someone with whom she got along especially well from the moment they met-and she'd catch herself thinking, Ah. He's real, too.

  Jeremy had been the realest of the real. They had shared the same ecological politics, the same yearning for things medieval, and the same bewilderment over contemporary society. For two years they had a wonderful relationship, exasperating their parents and their respective university departments, before Marion grew tired of the game and of Jeremy's endless defiant failures. "I couldn't take mid-terms," he would explain earnestly. "Because I had to go to Maryland for a meeting of the Shire that week. After all, I am a baron." Such priorities had seemed logical when they were dating, but when Marion was a student wife, working low-wage jobs to pay his tuition, the logic in his actions escaped her entirely. She began to feel like the sober guest at a beer blast. Finally, deciding to bet her money on her own abilities instead of his, Marion enrolled in graduate school, moved out, and never looked back.

  Still, she wasn't sure she had ever got the old philosophy out of her system. She had consciously renounced it a few years later when she discovered that most of her real friends bickered endlessly and accomplished very little. Later she came to the uneasy realization that her concept of real and unreal people was very similar to the chauvinistic male's idea of women, the bigot's perception of other races, and, most troubling of all, similar to the way in which serial killers view their victims: they're not real, but I am. They don't matter, but I do. That was when the philosophy of exclusion had begun to frighten her.

  Now, of course, she told herself that everyone had a soul and feelings, and that mundanes were very worthwhile people, but sometimes the old attitude came back anyhow. Just last week, Marion had been in line at the Chinese restaurant's lunch buffet, and the pixy-faced young woman in front of her had taken forever, staring at the rice and bean curd as if she couldn't remember what they were. Marion had caught herself thinking, Well, she's not real! The realization that she had thought that about someone even for an instant was an unsettling feeling. It gave her kinship with people she would rather not think of at all, and it made her wonder where such arrogance might have led. Did any of the Lanthanides share this view of reality? Now that she thought of it, it was just the opposite of Curtis Phillips' problem: Marion thought that most people weren't real and didn't matter; Curtis Phillips had fervently believed that demons were, and did.

  "So tell me about Curtis Phillips," said Jay Omega, as if on cue. (Marion could never decide if Jay was real or not, but he was utterly unlike Jeremy, and that was enough.)

  "Poor Curt," said Erik Giles, who had suddenly awakened. "He had such talent."

  "When someone mentions Curtis Phillips, I always think of Richard Dadd," said Marion. She glanced at Jay to see if he recognized the name. It was obvious that he did not. Dadd was one of the things Marion had learned about in her "Middle Earth" period. "Richard Dadd was a mid-nineteenth-century English artist who became famous for his wonderfully complex paintings of fairy life. His paintings-surrealistic in style and much ahead of their time-were much admired, right up until the night that the artist cut his father's throat."

  "Another practitioner of nonfiction?" asked Jay.

  "Apparently so. He seemed to be having delusions about demons, and hearing voices ordering him to kill, so perhaps he was painting what he saw. He was tried and found insane, and they put him in Broadmoor, where he spent the remainder of his life painting increasingly bizarre landscapes peopled by demons." In lecture mode, Marion prattled happily on. "The asylum kept his paintings, and many of them are still on display there. They're worth a fortune."

  "It sounds very like poor Curtis," Erik Giles agreed. "He didn't kill anyone, of course, but after the early success of his horror novels, his behavior became more and more erratic, and I believe there were a few episodes of violence with various editors."

  "What sort of episodes?" asked Jay, possibly in search of inspiration.

  "I believe he mailed a dead opossum to one of them. And he threatened another one with a razor. He confounded the local police a few times by confessing to murders."

  "Murders?"

  "Yes. President Kennedy, Janis Joplin, and, I believe, Joan of Arc. I'm told that
every police department has cranks whose hobby is confessing. He once wrote to me saying that he had killed George Woodard and Pat Malone, but since Pat had been dead for a couple of years and I had a letter from George that same day, I dismissed it as wishful thinking."

  "It sounds as if he needed psychiatric treatment," said Jay.

  "He got it. That was when it was decided that he had to be institutionalized. I am told that he continued to write his fantasy stories even while he was in Butner, and in fact two of his short story collections were written there. In the end, of course, his personality became too fragmented for the discipline of composition, and he degenerated into-well, I didn't go and visit him in those final years. I did go once in the mid-sixties, and he seemed lucid enough then."

  "Did he seem well enough to be released?" asked Marion.

  "Oh, no. He asked about Brendan and Peter, and I told him what they were doing, and then he told me about his demons and what they were doing. I never went back."

  "Do you suppose the asylum owns the copyright to Curtis Phillips' later work?" asked Marion. "You know, the way Broad-moor owns the Dadd collection?"

  "I don't know. I doubt it, though. Curtis was so well known before he was committed that I would have expected his family to take legal steps to administer his estate."

  "It will be interesting to see if anyone turns up to represent his interests at the auction."

  "Bunzie will know about all that. His people contacted us, because we all had to agree to let Bunzie's agent represent us in the book deal. He thought negotiations would be much simpler if we had only one representative working for the entire group."

  "He has put a lot of work into this reunion," said Marion, taking another look at the brochure.

  Erik Giles grinned. "He hates to see other people screw up. Besides, he can delegate most of the arrangements to his staff."

  "I suppose he can," said Marion, but she made a mental note to observe Bunzie carefully. She tended to distrust altruistic people.

  Jay Omega slowed the car. "Look! A 'Welcome to Tennessee sign. Shall we go in search of the Mountaineer Lodge, stop for dinner, or go and look at the lake?"

  Marion shivered. "I don't think I want to look at the lake just yet."

  "Nor do I," said Erik Giles.

  Chapter 6

  In the town's open grave he lies under star spillage, bone cold and sore, thinking his way home.

  – DON JOHNSON Watauga Drawdown

  The Mountaineer Lodge had been designed to be picturesque. In the early eighties an architect for the Tennessee State Park Service had designed a rustic-looking hotel of timber-framed oak and glass, intended to make out-of-state visitors think of Davy Crockett and to satisfy environmentalists that the new building harmonized with its pastoral surroundings. The Mountaineer Lodge was an imposing fretwork of rafters, joists, beams, and purlins slotted together with hand-tooled joints: a modern version of the pioneer cabin, expanded to accommodate fifty guests in neo-rustic splendor, i.e. with central heating and air conditioning, multilevel decks encircling the building, and floor-to-ceiling vistas of the Gene C. Breedlove Lake. Nestled into a hillside of oaks and mountain laurel, the lodge was known for its simple elegance and for its breathtaking views of the lake.

  At present, one of these attributes was missing.

  Gone was the shining green lake that had formerly stretched out from beneath the lodge's decks to meet the green hills on the far side of the valley. In its place was a mud hole two miles wide, dotted with rubble and dead trees. In the center of this moonscape, the Watauga River coursed along in its accustomed banks, carrying the lake water on downstream in daily increments.

  Erik Giles stood at the glass wall of the hotel lobby and stared out at the desolation. His suitcase sat forgotten beneath the ledge of the check-in booth.

  "Do you think we ought to go and talk to him?" whispered Marion to Jay, who was filling out a reservation card.

  "I don't know," said Jay. " 'What company are you with?' Should I put the university?"

  "No. This isn't an academic conference." Marion looked at Giles' unmoving figure in the fading light. "It's a wake." Without waiting for Jay's reply, she hurried to Giles' side, touching him lightly on the arm. "Are you all right?"

  He turned to look at her. "Yes, of course. I was just a bit surprised by the look of it. I'm trying to get my bearings, but this bears no resemblance to the valley I remember, so I've no idea where we are in relation to the farm. Still it's fascinating to see what engineers can do in such a short time. I wonder what they did with all the water."

  "I expect Jay would know," said Marion, still trying to gauge Giles' mood. She pointed to the dead landscape of rocks and red mud. "You don't find this depressing?"

  Giles seemed puzzled by her concern. "Why? They're going to put it back, aren't they? It isn't as if it were strip mining. Three weeks from now this will be a lovely lake again." He started back toward the registration desk. "Well, that's enough sightseeing for now. I suppose I'd better go and check in. Are any of the others here yet?"

  "I didn't ask. Of course, the reunion actually begins tomorrow, but you could ask if anyone else has arrived early. Someone may have left you a message. Jay and I thought that we would wait to see if any of your old friends had turned up, and then we'll go to dinner. Unless you need us to stay around. Or you're welcome to join us if you like."

  He smiled at her. "Let me see what my options are."

  "Good idea," said Marion. "While you check in, I think I'll help Jay take the bags up to our room. We'll meet you here in the lobby in ten minutes."

  She found Jay Omega hauling suitcases out of the trunk of the Oldsmobile and loading them onto a rolling cart that he had borrowed from the hotel lobby.

  "That was organized of you," said Marion approvingly. "I came out to volunteer my services as a bearer, but I see that you don't need my help after all."

  "I'm an engineer," Jay reminded her. "We are trained to be efficient and organized. That's what we do."

  "And English professors are trained to be sensitive, but I don't see much of that in Erik."

  Jay Omega finished loading the luggage cart and began to maneuver it toward the glass doors of the lobby. "What do you mean? How is Erik being insensitive?"

  She shrugged. "I thought that he would be more upset by the destruction of the valley he used to live in, but he seemed to think it was exciting. As far as he was concerned, the whole process was an engineering conjuring trick." She looked suspiciously at the self-confessed engineer. "I suppose you agree with him?"

  Jay stopped the can in mid-lobby to take a long look out the window. "It's probably a very nice lake. I grant you that the site looks hellish at the moment, but that's what lakes look like underneath. The question is, was this lake necessary, and I don't know the answer to that. I'm not a civil engineer."

  The elevator opened, and they hurried to get the cart inside before the doors closed. Marion was silent until they arrived on the second floor. "Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive," she remarked. "But I think that if this valley had once been my home, I would be upset at seeing it so desolate."

  "Well, Marion, he's had thirty years to get used to the idea."

  She shuddered. "I don't think that would be long enough for me."

  "Here's our room, 208." Jay fumbled for the key. "Are we meeting Erik back downstairs?"

  "Yes. I told him ten minutes."

  The key clicked in the lock, and he pushed open the door, signaling for Marion to enter first. She glanced at the quilted twin beds, the framed silkscreen prints of mountain scenes, and the little round table placed under a swag lamp. "It looks okay," she conceded. "Nouveau rustic motel."

  At the far end of the room the floor-length curtains were drawn to keep out the evening sun. Marion pushed back the curtains and called out to Jay Omega, "Oh, goody! A view of the lake."

  When they returned to the lobby ten minutes later, Erik Giles was sitting on one of the earth-tone sofas, leafing
through a travel brochure on Ruby Falls. "In my day the big attraction was Rock City," he remarked. "Half the barns in the region had 'See Rock City' printed on the roof in white letters. I never did, though. Wonder if it's still in business."

  Marion frowned. "I think that's down near Chattanooga. This part of east Tennessee seems fairly devoid of tourist traps."

  Giles grinned. "Don't tell Bunzie. He might try to turn this into a permanent exhibit."

  "Is he here yet?" asked Marion, trying not to sound starstruck.

  "No. He must be on his way, though. There was an invitation to a cocktail party for the Lanthanides in the Franklin Suite at nine tonight, so apparently we're all getting together to socialize before the media gets here to cramp our style." He looked up at Jay Omega. "Speaking of the Lanthanides, I'm afraid that I must ask a favor of you. There was another message here, too. It was addressed to 'Whichever of the Lanthanides Arrives First.' "

  "Interesting," said Jay Omega. "A door prize?"

  "Alas, no. It's from George Woodard. He's stranded at the State Welcome Center with car trouble. He wants us to go and get him."

  The invisible woman was enjoying her plane ride. At least she was registering ironic amusement at the fact that no one seemed to notice her or cared to speak with her. She was not enjoying the trip in the sense that she was actually happy; she did not particularly care for plane rides. But it was pleasant to be going on an unexpected vacation, and at the moment it was entertaining to contemplate the lengths to which this invisibility might extend. Could she get up and dance naked in the aisles? Could she sing at the top of her lungs? No, but she could certainly observe her fellow passengers without fear of return scrutiny. She was the closest thing there is to nonexistent: an overweight, middle-aged woman.