by Tim Waggoner
But the main reason he forced himself to breathe deeply and ignore his bladder was because he was too concerned about Marie to leave. He had to know if she was okay.
There were no zombies in sight. None in the school parking lot, none in the street, none in the yards of nearby houses. But that didn’t mean they weren’t close by. In the first weeks after the majority of Lockwood’s survivors moved into and fortified the high school, zombies had crowded around the building twenty-four hours a day, moaning in frustration as they searched for a way to get inside. Sentries began picking them off one by one and watching while others fell upon the corpses of their no-longer-walking dead brethren and chowed down. After about a month of this, fewer zombies came, until finally they stayed away from the high school. Every now and again one would approach, maybe even two or three, but they didn’t stick around long, and if they lingered, the sentries would take care of them.
Joe had no idea if the zombies had learned it was safer to avoid the school, or even if they were capable of learning. Maybe they’d stopped coming for some other reason entirely or maybe for no reason at all. Marie had some theories. She had tons of them where the zombies were concerned. But all Joe cared about was that his sleep—restless and fitful though it still was—was no longer interrupted by that goddamned all-night moaning.
But while the zombies might not crowd around the high school anymore, there were still a hell of a lot of them in town. No one had done an official count, of course, but Marie estimated there were at least twenty zombies for every human left alive in Lockwood, and probably a lot more. So while things were better than in the first few weeks after Blacktide had burned out most of the human race, it was still hella dangerous out there, and it twisted his guts into knots whenever Marie went out alone.
That was why he’d gone to Kate when he’d noticed Marie hadn’t shown up for lunch. Kate was the only Ranger who would still go out and get Marie. Everyone else figured if she was that determined to commit suicide, why stop her?
He listened closely, hoping to hear some sound that would indicate Kate, Nicholas and Marie were returning. But all he heard was wind, birdsong and squirrels rustling through the leaves on the ground as they scurried about, preparing for winter. Despite the risks, he wished Kate had taken one of the vehicles in the parking lot. Without any other traffic noise, the sound of a single car engine carried for miles. But that was also why people used vehicles so rarely. Engine noise was like a clarion call for zombies, drawing them from all over town. Traveling on foot had its hazards, but at least it was quiet. Well, quieter.
Then he saw them coming down Poplar Street. Kate and Nicholas carried their rifles at the ready, heads turning back and forth as they kept an eye out for zombies. Marie walked between them, looking sullen, like a kid whose parents were forcing her to come home from a party early, just when the fun was beginning to start.
Joe let out a sigh of relief. Now he could go piss.
Marie sat at the end of a hallway, her back against a locker. Her locker, or at least the one that had been hers last March. Some of her shit was still in there—textbooks, notebooks, gym shoes. She hadn’t bothered to clean it out. What was the point? She’d been a senior last year, and she supposed, since she’d never gotten the chance to graduate, she’d be a senior forever.
She sat cross-legged, a stack of paperback books and comics on the floor next to her. The locker metal felt cool through the fabric of her jean jacket, but not unpleasantly so. It would get colder tonight, but nothing a couple extra covers wouldn’t take care of. She wasn’t looking forward to winter, though. Lockwood had been without power since March, and there was some debate about how they were going to keep warm during the cold months. Fuel wasn’t a problem. The school was full of flammable material—desks, tables, chairs, books, paper—but no one was sure how many fires they’d need, where they should be located, and what would be the best way to handle the smoke. Not to mention how to avoid burning down the school. Marie had some thoughts on the matter, but no one had asked her, and she didn’t feel like sharing her ideas. No one would listen to her anyway. They all figured she was nuts.
She wondered if they were right.
She picked up a book at random, a well-worn paperback with an illustration of greenish-gray hands that seemed to be straining to reach out of the cover and grab hold of the reader. She opened the book and began reading. There was a window close by, and it let in enough light for her to see. She soon found herself lost in the familiar story.
She had no idea how much time passed before she heard Joe say, “You may be the only person left on Earth who still reads zombie novels.”
She didn’t look up. “I’m not reading for fun. It’s research.”
“As research goes, I imagine it’s a hell of a lot safer than whatever you were up to today.”
When she didn’t answer, Joe sat down on the floor next to her. He picked up one of the comics and began thumbing through it. Its cover had a garish illustration of a sinister-faced zombie dressed in tattered rags, gnawing on a severed leg.
She glanced at him sideways. He was a few years older than her and a good head taller, with a full black beard and long hair that he wore bound in a ponytail. He wore black-framed hipster glasses, the lenses making his eyes look twice as big as they really were. The owl-eye effect gave his face a comical aspect that she knew he hated, but she thought it was cute. He used to be heavier. Not fat, exactly, but definitely overweight. Now he only had a bit of a belly. Who could’ve known the zombie apocalypse would turn out to be such a fantastic weight-loss program? He wore jeans, boots and a black hoodie, wore them so often, in fact, they were almost his unofficial uniform. Right now, his hoodie was unzipped, and she saw he wore a brown T-shirt with the words Korean Zombie on the front. She had no idea what it meant.
Marie thought he was handsome, in a nerdy kind of way. But that was okay. She was a little nerdy herself. Well…maybe more than a little. She would’ve preferred that he didn’t smell quite so strong. She had a better sense of smell than most people, and the musky man odor Joe exuded said he was overdue for a shower. But that wasn’t his fault. These days, water was for drinking and cooking first, and washing bodies and clothes second.
“I never understood why so many people were into zombie stories,” Joe said, still looking through the comic. “I mean, they’re all the same. An outbreak happens, lots of people die, and only a chosen few remain alive to fight for survival. And by the end they either get munched by zombies or become zombies themselves.” He flipped through a couple more pages. “Meanwhile, the reader is bitching at the characters for making stupid decisions and thinking about how much better they’d do in the same situation.”
Marie snorted, but she still didn’t look up from her book. “Seriously? This from a guy who used to spend most of his time playing at being a zombie?”
“Zombie killer,” he corrected.
“Same difference.” She closed the book and turned to face Joe. “Tell me how playing an online multiplayer game called Risen—which, I’ll point out, is set during a zombie apocalypse—is so different from reading about zombies.”
He looked at her for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure how to respond. He never seemed to know how to take the things she said. She liked that. It made him fun to talk to.
“It’s true that the setup is the standard zombie apocalypse scenario, but after that, players get to make their own decisions in the game. Their actions can have consequences that change the scenario, so there’s no way to know how the story will end. It’s unpredictable. Like life.” He paused. “Too much like life these days.”
He closed the comic and dropped it back on the pile.
He sounded depressed, and she felt bad for teasing him. After all, his experiences playing Risen had been a huge help to the other survivors, herself included. He’d played the game for several years, had even competed in a couple tournaments, and the problems he’d had to solve in the game were the same problems
that had confronted them after Blacktide. How to find shelter, how to make that shelter safe, how to find food and supplies, how to go on scavenging runs without getting killed, how to set up their own miniature system of government, and more. Sure, they might’ve figured out all this stuff without his help, but it would’ve taken a lot longer, and more people would’ve died during the process. Yeah, Risen was just a game, but then so were the simulations used to train cops, pilots and military personnel. Joe was living a gamer’s dream come true: he was inside the game, playing it for real.
She didn’t say any of this to him, though. She figured she’d done enough damage for one afternoon.
She opened the book and started reading again. She hoped Joe would take the hint and get up and leave, but he didn’t. He just sat there quietly. After a while, he spoke again.
“Did you learn anything new today?”
Now he wasn’t playing fair. He knew she couldn’t resist talking about her research. She closed the book once more and, despite herself, told him with increasing excitement about the experiment in the park. When she was finished telling the story, she added, “And the weirdest part was that the male zombie was Kate’s brother.”
“No shit?” Joe shook his head. “Man, I can’t imagine what kind of mindfuck that would be, running into your brother after all these months. Both of my parents died in the initial wave of Blacktide, and my sister…”
Joe shuddered and his hands started to tremble. He tucked them under his arms so she wouldn’t see. She didn’t know what had happened to his sister. He’d never spoken of it before, but from his reaction, she had a good idea.
“She didn’t last long,” he finished.
Marie remembered sitting in her room, door locked, hands pressed tight against her ears to block out the screams of her younger brother coming from his bedroom across the hall. It hadn’t helped, though. She’d still heard his agonized cries, along with the savage grunting of her parents as they ripped chunks of meat from their son and began to feast.
She forced the memory away before it could affect her. Like so many survivors, she’d gotten really good at suppressing her emotions when necessary. Too bad Joe hadn’t managed to get the hang of it. He fought to put up a strong front, but she knew he struggled with anxiety. She could feel it whenever she was around him. It was one thing to be a badass zombie killer in a virtual world, she supposed, but quite another to deal with the undead in real life.
He changed the subject. “So what do you think it means? The zombie opening the cage and sharing the squirrel, I mean.”
“His name is David,” Marie said. She understood why people felt a need to dehumanize zombies. After all, they weren’t really human anymore, were they? But as much as Joe had been into Risen, she’d been into zombie books, comics and movies. The stories were filled with cautions about the mental and emotional effects of living in the postapocalyptic world. Once you began seeing zombies as objects, it was only a short jump to viewing your fellow survivors as objects. And when that happened a bad situation got even worse.
“For one thing, it means not all zombies are alike,” she said. “Most people think of them as mindless monsters. But David displayed signs of individuality.”
“Maybe,” Joe said. “But even if he did, does it matter? It doesn’t make him more human. I mean, even wild animals show individuality sometimes, right? One wolf is more aggressive than another, one elephant more timid than the rest in the herd. That kind of thing.”
Although she enjoyed talking with him about this kind of stuff—about anything, really—it irritated her when he acted like this, as if he were bringing up obvious points she’d missed. He never did it with any malice, and she doubted he was aware of how he sounded at times like these, but it made her want to smack him. She struggled to keep an edge of irritation out of her voice as she continued.
“Animals were born animals, but zombies were once people. They sometimes go through the motions of being alive. I’ve seen it. A mail carrier will walk his route as if he’s still delivering letters. A woman will yank the weeds from a patch of overgrown ground that used to be her flower garden. One will sit behind the wheel of a car, gripping the steering wheel, as if driving. Maybe, somewhere inside, zombies are still the people they once were. At least in some ways.”
“I hope not.” He hurried on before she could protest. “For their sake, I mean. Would you want to be trapped inside a zombie body, aware on some level that you’ve become a cannibalistic monster that’s murdered dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people?”
She sighed. “No, I wouldn’t. But if we could somehow reach the part of them that’s still human, learn to communicate with them…”
“Then what? Maybe they’d stop trying to eat us?”
She looked at him defiantly. “Maybe. In the park, David didn’t attack Kate and Nicholas. Instead, he ran off. Maybe it was only because he’s smarter than the average zombie and recognized that they were going to kill him. But that means he was able to control his hunger. You know as well as I do that zombies won’t turn away from a meal, even if it means their death. But David did.”
“Maybe he’d eaten earlier and his belly was full,” Joe pointed out.
She shook her heard. “If he had, he would’ve gone into torpor.”
Zombies needed a few hours to digest their food, so after eating they found a hiding place and went into a trancelike state Marie had dubbed torpor. The name had caught on with the other survivors. If you ran across a zombie in torpor, you could sneak past it—or sneak up and kill it—if you were quiet. But if you made even the slightest sound, the zombie would come out of its trance and attack.
“I suppose so,” Joe said.
“So if a zombie can resist its hunger, then maybe they can choose not to kill us.”
“I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t run outside immediately and go test your theory.” Joe tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace.
Marie knew the idea of going outside terrified him, and because of this he hadn’t left the school in weeks. The fact that she went outside whenever she felt like it—alone—confounded him. He’d given up on trying to convince her not to do it, but she knew he didn’t approve.
Joe gestured toward the pile of books. “You said were reading these for research, but what can you learn from them? They’re just stories. I mean, I can see how you could pick up survival tips from them, assuming the writers did a good job with their own research. But you can’t learn anything about zombies themselves. The ones in all these stories aren’t real. There never were any zombies in the real world. Not until Blacktide happened.”
She turned to look at him once more. “Have you ever wondered about that? About why zombie movies, books, comics, games and toys were so popular before Blacktide? About why the change came along and made the basic story—the zombie apocalypse—actually happen?”
“I figure somebody somewhere decided to make it happen. Some crazy-ass bastard—or, more likely, a group of crazy-ass bastards with serious scientific know-how—created a zombie plague and let it loose on the world. Maybe they figured taking such a well-known scenario and making it real would be as much of a psychological weapon as a physical one.”
“Why would anybody create a weapon that would basically destroy the entire world?” she asked.
He smiled. “What, you mean like nuclear weapons? I said crazy, remember? Maybe whoever did it thought they could control Blacktide, but they were wrong. Whatever the specific details are, it had to have happened like that. It wouldn’t be the first time scientists have been inspired by fiction to create something real. People were writing about traveling to the moon before humans ever went there.”
“And cell phones look like the communicators in Star Trek,” she said. “I get it. I admit it’s possible. But you have to admit that there’s no way it can be a coincidence. Something like this—” she gestured to her zombie books, “—doesn’t come true by accident.”
“Agreed. So
you’re saying that if the creators of Blacktide used zombie fiction for inspiration, you might learn something useful from studying it.”
“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking. I believe there’s a reason why people were so interested—hell, almost obsessed—with zombies before Blacktide. And not just in books and movies. Risen was one of the most popular online games in the world, with millions of players.”
“Hundreds of millions,” Joe said.
She accepted his correction with a quick nod. “I think the reason why people were so into zombies is because on some subconscious level they knew Blacktide was coming.” She paused. “Maybe, somehow, they even made it happen.”
Chapter Four
It was an unseasonably warm day in mid-March—close to 80 degrees—and David was out in the front yard—not his yard, not anymore—tossing a Frisbee around with his kids, while Sasha, their golden retriever, ran back and forth, barking happily. Steve and Lizzie competed to see who could get to the Frisbee first, even though David had told them they should take turns. Steve was two years older than his sister, and he usually got to the Frisbee before she did. But she didn’t complain, didn’t cry, didn’t wail, “Daddy, it’s not fair!” Instead, she giggled and clapped whenever Steve caught the Frisbee. And although Steve got to it first, half the time he handed it to Lizzie to throw back to David. Both kids were good-natured for the most part, and even when they did fight, it wasn’t too bad and never lasted long. David thought, not for the first time, that he and Sarah had really gotten lucky with these two.