Zombies of the Gene Pool

by Sharyn McCrumb

  "Where is the town?" asked George Woodard, surveying the sea of mud surrounding the channel.

  Dub smiled. "This lake is seventeen miles long, buddy. It'll take us a good hour to get there, I reckon."

  They rode for a while in silence, past black trees spangled with snagged fishing lines and lures that clung to the dead branches like spiderwebs. There was an eerie stillness about the valley, and the slowness of the churning outboard made their passage seem like a nightmare journey through a surreal landscape. It might have been a deserted battlefield or the scene of some sudden disaster: the overriding feeling in the barren and silent valley was one of death and irreparable loss.

  Marion shivered. "It's so eerie in this wasteland. Lines from T. S. Eliot keep running through my head."

  "I know," murmured Angela Arbroath. "I've never seen a place so desolate in bright sunshine. It even feels cold. Do you suppose that it's Pat Malone that is making me feel gloomy?"

  George Woodard's piggy face became animated with alarm. "Angela!" he hissed. "We aren't supposed to talk about you-know-what."

  Marion looked at him with ill-concealed contempt. "I found the body," she said.

  "Did Mistral ask you not to tell anyone about Malone's death?" asked Jay.

  Angela nodded. "He didn't want the reporters to find out. He thought it would distract them from the reason we're here. I can't believe that Pat Malone is dead."

  George Woodard stared at her. "I can't believe he's alive!"

  "Yes, it takes some getting used to. I'd said good-bye to him all those years ago, and then suddenly he's back, and-"

  "In all my life I have loved but one man, and I have lost him twice," said Marion dreamily. Noting her companions' puzzled looks, Marion hastened to add: "That's from Cyrano. It seemed appropriate."

  They floated on in silence for a while. When they passed under the concrete arch of the Gene C. Breedlove Bridge, looming half a mile above their heads, envious spectators leaned over and waved at the makeshift flotilla. Its passengers craned their heads to peer at the pink blobs high above them, and a few of them returned the greeting.

  George Woodard, lost in thought, barely noticed the bridge at all. He was pondering the death of Pat Malone and envisioning a memorial issue of Alluvial. After giving the matter careful consideration, George had decided not to demean himself and his phone bill by activating the S-F grapevine, but he concluded that the prestige of his 'zine depended upon his being the final authority on the Lanthanides reunion and on the Malone affair. He was, after all, both an old comrade of Malone's and an eyewitness. Why should the other 'zine publishers have the story. If he established himself as the authority on it (surely none of the other Lanthanides would bother), he could be invited as Fan Guest of Honor to any number of conventions in the coming year, which would mean that he would have his way paid to these conventions and the really good ones would give him plaques for his wall commemorating his status as Fan Guest. Pat Malone owed him that.

  He considered his material for a memorial issue. New eulogies would have to be solicited, of course, and perhaps some samples of Pat's writings could be included. Would Pat's recent undeath affect the copyright laws, he wondered. Would anybody even believe that Pat Malone had come back? No one had thought to take any pictures of him. Perhaps it would be best not to mention him at all, but, of course, he had unimpeachable witnesses. And besides, hardly anyone ever questions the veracity of anything in fandom. The memorial issue was sure to be a big seller in fannish circles. He wondered if he could afford to double the number of copies for this issue.

  George, for one, was not sorry to see Pat Malone dead. The late Pat's sneering reappearance at the Lanthanides reunion had been a forceful reminder of how little he had missed the scornful, bullying Malone. George was always twice as inept when Malone was present. With painful clarity now, he remembered Pat Malone's old practical jokes at his expense. There was the shaving cream in his bed, and the phony acceptance letter from Weird Tales, and the campaign Pat and Curtis had started at a Knoxville con to "cure" George's virginity. Well, perhaps he ought to forgive them that one. Earlene had volunteered to effect the cure, and George had fallen hopelessly in love with her. Sometimes, though, he wondered if she had done it in hopes of getting the attention of Pat Malone.

  Had Earlene ever loved him? Were those sadistic jokers from the Fan Farm ever his friends? And did he like who he was; had he ever liked himself?

  George looked out at the barren lake bed, wondering if his life had been a mortal version of Breedlove Lake: a pleasant, opaque facade, covering up a whole lot of nothing.

  In the bow of the white motorboat Ruben Mistral struck a pose -like stout Cortes silent upon a peak in Darien, the Times reporter had quipped. Several of his colleagues scribbled down the phrase, unaware that Keats was being quoted. (USA Today reported the phrase as "a mountain in Connecticut.") Mistral's expression of solemn dignity suggested that he was leading an expedition up the Amazon rather than taking a boat ride in conjunction with a business deal. Occasionally, though, he forgot to provide a photo opportunity for the journalists' boat, and he would sit back down beside Brendan Surn and attempt to converse over the noise of the outboard motor.

  "Great to see you again, Brendan!" he said, patting the older man's shoulder. "It's been too long! About the only time I get to see you these days is at those damned science fiction cons!"

  Lorien Williams raised an eyebrow. "Don't you like cons?"

  Mistral's smile wavered, and he glanced at Surn for his cue. "Have you ever been to one?" he asked.

  "Of course," said Lorien. "I've been to-"

  "I mean, with Brendan. I've never seen you at a con with Brendan."

  Lorien shook her head. "No. I haven't had that honor yet."

  Mistral snorted. "Honor! Did he tell you about the time he took a manuscript-in-progress to a con so that he could read from it, and one of the fannish bastards stole it? That was in the days before copy machines, too. Or the time one hot little number sneaked into his room with a passkey, and he had to call hotel security? She was underage, of course."

  Brendan Surn smiled vaguely in Lorien's direction. "Not all fans are bad, Bunzie. We used to be fans."

  "We didn't behave the way these punks do today," growled Bunzie. "They've gone a long way past water balloons. The only reason I go to cons these days is to see old friends. This reunion is perfect. Old friends, and no fans."

  Lorien Williams studied him thoughtfully while she waited for Brendan to rise to the defense of fandom, but the old man turned away, staring at a rusting oil barrel that lay half buried in the Watauga mud flat.

  After an hour's journey upstream, they began to see more skeletal trees in the mire, and the remnants of stone walls loomed ahead of them on the port side. "Yep," said Dub the helmsman in response to the unspoken questions. "That's Wall Hollow coming up on the left there. Not much of it left, is there? That stone building over there was the jail, and next to it was the Azalea Cafe. It was built out of river rocks cemented together. It has held up real well. Of course, most of the town was made of wood, and it's all gone. You can still see the roads, though." He pointed at the patches of asphalt visible in the plain of red mud. "That would have been Main Street."

  "It doesn't look like a town anymore," said Marion, staring at the desolation.

  "No, but it puts me in mind of a funny story," said Dub, who seemed to be the least affected by the ruins. "At the time the town was condemned by the TVA to make way for Breedlove Lake, there was a mayoral race going on in Wall Hollow, and strange as it may seem, the election was hotly contested. And one old boy said, 'I don't know what those politicians are getting so net up about. The next mayor of Wall Hollow will be a catfish.' "

  The passengers laughed politely, and Angela asked him whether he had gone to the new Wall Hollow, the one that the TVA constructed on the other side of the lake for the refugees.

  Dub rubbed his chin and steered for the deepest part of the river. "No, ma
'am," he said after a bit. "I moved on over to Labrot Cove, about five miles from here, where I had some kin. I didn't want to lose anything else to that lake there." He shrugged. "Of course, that was a good while ago. Over the years I have got used to it, and now I go fishing over in here without giving it another thought. Why, many's the time I've hauled in a big old channel cat, and said to myself, 'I believe I've done caught the mayor.' "

  Erik Giles had been studying the asphalt lines in the mud, trying to get his bearings from the remnants of buildings left as clues. He pointed to a barren hillside in the distance. "Keep going," he said. "Dugger's farm was just up that hollow. The river will take us most of the way."

  The trio of boats glided past the ruins of the old train depot and passed within the shadow of the old stone gristmill, a shell of a building still standing against the deluge of pent-up lake water. The only sound for several minutes was the click of camera shutters from the flat-bottomed tourist boat as the photojournalists recorded the occasion.

  Once past the wreckage of the old river bridge, the Watauga snaked between smooth red hills that for years had been merely shallow places in the lake. Now they were mounds of rubble, ringed like redwoods with the concentric circles of ebbing waves. The river sank into a narrowing valley, past smooth stretches that must have been pasture land, and at times it flowed only a few feet below the level of the asphalt remnants of a country road.

  The asphalt gave way to a stretch of pebbles, and then the road vanished altogether into mud the color of rust.

  "This used to be a beautiful place," said Erik Giles in a voice that was little more than a whisper. "It was so green and peaceful. And we were such kids then. We thought 'happily ever after' was just a question of waiting long enough. We just didn't understand the randomness of our existence." He laughed bitterly. "Now, of course, we know better. Now, I'd say this is a pretty good metaphor for the way life is: it seems beautiful and endlessly deep while you're young, but little by little the water-the life-slips away, and you are left with nothing."

  "Do you know where you are yet?" the pilot of the lead craft asked Ruben Mistral.

  Mistral shrugged. "The moon?"

  The boatman forced a smile. "Best I can recall, Dugger's farm ought to be in the next quarter mile or so, and you'll be wanting to leave the boat there, I reckon, and do some walking around."

  "Yes," said Mistral. "It's just hard to get your bearings in this wasteland. Conyers, can you tell where we are?"

  "I think so," said the lawyer. "See that outcrop of rocks up the hill there, just below the pine trees? I've stood on Dale's front porch many a time staring up at that thing. In the twilight-from a certain angle-it looks like an Indian. If the foundations of the farmhouse haven't sunk into the mud, we ought to see them right about now."

  A few moments later they rounded a bend, removing a looming sandhill from their line of sight. "Look!" said Lorien Williams, pointing to a swampy plateau partway up the slope. "Is that a chimney?"

  It was. There was a gently sloping hollow between two bare hills, and within its basin a pool of lake water had settled, covering the foundations of Dale Dugger's farmhouse with its own riparian shroud. A two-pronged remnant of a locust tree rose out of the shallows, and twenty feet past it, a crumbling rock chimney protruded from the orange water.

  "We found it," said Mistral. "Start looking for a place to dock."

  The three boatmen maneuvered their vessels toward an outcrop of boulders on the bank of the river. One at a time they were able to drift in close enough so that the passengers could climb out of the boats onto the rocks and make their way up the slope toward the site of Dugger's farm. Ruben Mistral, the first to disembark, repeated his landfall several times for the benefit of the cameramen, and then he created another photo opportunity by assisting Brendan Surn from the boat and pointing solemnly toward the ruined chimney. Together they scrambled up the rocky bank, picking their way along the driest parts of the lake bed, trailing a gaggle of camcorders and journalists in their wake.

  The other members of the party were left to clamber up the river bank as best they could, without the encouragement of the media or the editors.

  "This is certainly a grim occasion," Marion whispered to Jay. "I feel like a gatecrasher at a funeral."

  "Remember that we're here to see that Erik doesn't overdo it," said Jay. "Maybe you can cheer him up. He doesn't seem very happy."

  Marion looked about her. "None of them do. Isn't it odd how things broke down so quickly into matters of status? Mistral stays mostly with Surn-the two pros, associating mainly with each other. And Conyers and his wife are talking to Erik-the sober ex-fans in coalition. That leaves Woodard and Angela, who were never anything but fans. But maybe I shouldn't mention this to you, Jay. After all, you're a dirty old pro."

  He sighed wearily. "I just accidentally wrote an S-F novel, okay? I didn't mean to apply for citizenship in the Twilight Zone."

  "I don't think you can apply, Jay. I think fandom takes hostages."

  "Be careful where you step, George," said Angela Arbroath, grabbing his elbow. "That puddle may be deeper than you think."

  George Woodard, who hadn't even seen the mud hole he nearly plunged into, blinked out of his reverie and thanked her. "I was just thinking about the time we stayed up all night listening to the plotting of Starwind Rising," he said. "The moon was shining low beneath that branch of the locust tree, and it filled the whole horizon. As we listened to that story, I could actually see the story happening. I remember picturing one of the heroes looking just like Conyers. You know, he always did have that clean-chiseled ail-American look. It was just like a movie going on in our heads. Once I found myself searching the surface of the moon, looking for traces of the domed cities, and I remember checking to see if my helmet was on. My helmet! I'd forgotten I wasn't in a spaceship orbiting the moon."

  Angela smiled. "I didn't know Brendan had talked about his books in such detail to you all."

  George flushed. "Actually, it was Dale who told that story. But I'm sure he'd discussed it beforehand with Brendan!"

  Angela nodded. "I suppose so." She looked around the valley and then at the chimney rising out of muddy water a few yards away. "I guess I remember Pat better than anyone else from the Fan Farm. Sometimes he'd tell me what all of you were up to when he wrote to me."

  "Do you still have the letters?" asked George eagerly. "I'm planning a memorial issue of Alluvial."

  "No, George. I wouldn't let anyone see those letters without first obtaining Pat's permission, and I guess that isn't going to happen, is it?" Seeing his disappointment, she went on. "There isn't much in them that would interest fandom, anyhow, George. Like most men, Pat talked mostly about himself. And he tried to carry on a long-distance romance with me, which worked better on paper than it did in real life." She smiled ruefully. "Like a lot of things in fandom."

  Their conversation stopped when a reporter approached them, tape recorder in hand. "Can you tell me what your thoughts are at this moment?" she asked breathlessly.

  George Woodard squinted at her. "Are you from Locus?"

  After twenty minutes of site inspection, interspersed with photos and interviews, Ruben Mistral signaled for everyone's attention. When the crowd stopped milling around and stood in a respectful huddle around him, he stalked over to the black husk of a tree a few hundred yards from the chimney pool. The tree stood at the foot of a gently sloped mound of red clay, scored by a series of upright posts, each about four feet high.

  "This is what remains of the fence," Mistral announced. "The first landmark. And that is the tree that we used as the second marker. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the very spot on which, thirty-six years ago, the Lanthanides buried their time capsule. It is time to resurrect the past. It is time to begin the digging. I will go first."

  Mistral's contribution to the retrieval effort was to remove exactly two spadefuls of mud-the second was for good measure, in case someone's first photo did not turn out well. Aft
er that, each of the Lanthanides was invited to be filmed wielding the shovel, before the actual work of unearthing the jar was turned over to the three boatmen, under the direction of Geoffrey Duke. All four had donned khaki coveralls for the messy job of excavating a mud hole.

  Marion clutched Jay's hand. "What if it isn't there?" she whispered.

  He groaned. "Don't even think such a thing!"

  "Well, what if it isn't? Everybody in fandom knew it was there, didn't they? Suppose crazed science fiction fans from Knox-ville-"

  "Hush, Marion!"

  "I wonder if anybody will ever make such a big deal over your unpublished stuff."

  "I doubt it," said Jay. "They certainly haven't been overly enthusiastic about the published stuff."

  Several yards away from them, Brendan Surn was leaning on Lorien Williams' arm and smiling benignly at the diggers. "Aren't you excited about this?" asked Lorien, smiling up at him.

  "Why, yes," said Brendan Surn mildly. "Yes, thank you. It's very nice."

  Lorien's smile froze in place. That was the answer Brendan always gave when he was fading out of the here and now and hadn't the least idea of what was going on. No more interview questions today, she thought. She wondered how she would field the questions for him.

  While the digging was going on, Ruben Mistral took up a position a safe distance away from the mudslinging, which he watched with an expression of dignified expectation. A few of the reporters tried to bait him with fanciful questions, such as "What if you find a skeleton?" or "What if the time capsule isn't there?" but he only smiled at them and refused to be drawn into any negative speculation. Privately he was wondering how the authorities were dealing with the problem of the late Pat Malone back at the Mountaineer Lodge, and he was wondering whether he ought to take any steps to suppress the news of his death. So far so good, he told himself. There would be time to worry about damage control later. First, let them find that damned jar.