Chapter 12: Moonwalk
“Why the hell does every goddamn zombie on this planet want you dead?” Doyle says as we walk into the underground control room.
“It’s good to see you too,” I say, ignoring him.
Steve slumps into a seat in front of the row of monitors mounted on the wall. Most of the screens are on. A few of them are black. Some of them have dead pixels showing their age—tiny black dots that never change color or position. One of the screens has several thick black lines running down the image, marring the view. It’s not intentional. Everything’s old and falling into disrepair.
Doyle flicks between images on the main, central screen, but his eyes dart from one screen to another, taking in all the views around the complex. The resolution on the various screens differs from one another. Some render in stunning high definition. A few of them are fuzzy and out of focus. One is in coarse black and white. I recognize the shot of our corridor. The doors of the various rooms are open and the lights are on. I can just make out the table we stood on to get into the vent.
Ajeet and Elizabeth follow us into the control room still wearing their space suits. They’ve both got their helmets off, each tucked under a bulky arm. They look like they’ve just stepped out of a reentry capsule. Their suits are huge, oversized, making their heads look small.
Ajeet twists the steel cuffs on his sleeve, loosening his gloves and taking them off.
“Damn, that was close,” he says, wiping sweat from his forehead. He leans back against a desk, resting the weight of his bulky backpack on the polished wood. Johnson helps Ajeet and Elizabeth unclip the hoses and cables connecting their suits to their packs.
“What happened?” Steve asks as I sit beside him in one of the swiveling office chairs.
Doyle glares at him as though it’s obvious. With animosity in his voice, he says, “We lost power to the back of the warehouse. We didn’t think anything of it at the time. Power shorts. Fuses blow. Shit happens. We followed standard procedure. Two by two. Anders and McCulloch went to check it out. They never came back. Next thing we know, there are goddamn zombies everywhere.”
“Best I understand it,” Ajeet says. “the zombies took out our power. They ate through the line.”
“But how would they—” I begin, only to be cut off by Doyle.
“There are tens of thousands of them out there,” he says. “And they’re all after you!”
Ajeet looks at me with compassion, asking, “Why?”
“I—I don’t know,” I say.
No one believes me. From the look on Steve’s face, even he’s not sure.
“How bad?” I ask.
“How many survived?” Steve asks, interpreting my question for me.
“This is it,” Doyle says with barely disguised anger. “Just us. Four of us. Plus you two. Everyone else is gone. Dead. Undead.”
I’m silent. My heart sinks.
Johnson crouches down in front of me. Adjusting his glasses, he speaks with kindness, saying, “We need your help. We need to understand what’s happening here. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“I don’t know,” I say as tears well up in my eyes.
Johnson pushes my chair gently, guiding me over by one of the large screens.
“Watch this,” he says. He uses a computer mouse to pull up video files, searching through them for a few seconds before hitting play.
A fuzzy black and white image appears.
“This is the view from one of the security cameras on the side of the mall.”
A car races through an intersection, plowing through half a dozen zombies, mowing them down like grass. As quickly as it came, the car disappears out of shot.
“Hey,” Steve says. “That was us. We were bowling for zombies!”
“Looks like fun,” Johnson says, jogging the video and fast forwarding through the motion of several other vehicles. In a blur, another Cadillac, a sports car, and a truck bounce through the intersection, scattering zombies like bowling pins.
Fun.
Bodies lie strewn in the street.
Arms clutch at the air, sticking out from beneath the crumpled bloody mess on the road.
These are people. Or they were. Even though I know they’re inhuman, it’s hard to see such carnage played out again. Zombie or not, they’re suffering. But zombies feel no pain, I tell myself, not really sure what zombies think or feel. They’re animals. No, they’re worse than animals. They’re monsters. They deserve this. They deserve to die, right? Deserve? They need to die. But to suffer cruel agony? No. Leaving them to writhe in pain says more about us than it does about them. We should have put them out of their misery. But we couldn’t, there was no time. There were too many of them.
For me, it’s strange to relive these moments and find thoughts from those frantic few minutes finally catching up with me. One of the unexpected side effects of the zombie apocalypse is it forces us to confront what it means to be human. Zee may not have morals, but we do. To be human is to refuse to sink to the level of monsters. Zee may not feel anything, but we are defined by our emotions. We must be, or Zee wins.
In the back of my mind, Johnson’s words replay softly. “Looks like fun.” He may have uttered those words, but the inflection in his voice tells me he doesn’t believe them. There was a lack of conviction, a lack of detachment. I’m not sure about Doyle, but I don’t think anyone else sees any of this as fun. Not even Steve, and like me, he was wrapped up in the euphoria of the moment when we pushed those cars down the hill. We did what we had to.
I have no illusions about what will happen to us and our loved ones if Zee has his way, and yet it never gets any easier to do what needs to be done. Whether it’s caving in a skull with a baseball bat or softly squeezing a trigger, death is never easy.
Johnson lets the video run at normal speed as one last Cadillac rolls into the intersection, crushing dozens of bodies under its tires before stopping in the middle of the street.
“What happened next?” he asks.
For me, it’s surreal watching four fuzzy figures climbing out of the Cadillac, knowing that was us just a few days ago. I feel as though several years have passed. We had no idea anyone other than Zee was watching.
“That’s David and Jane,” Steve says, pointing as they run to one side. “And that’s us going into the vet clinic.”
“And that’s where you found them?” Elizabeth asks. “The tablets?”
“Yes,” I say, hoping this is helpful. “There’s a small loading dock at the back of the building leading into a warehouse. We found the tablets in one of the aisles.”
“We need to get some of those tablets,” Ajeet says.
“You think that explains their behavior?” Doyle asks, and I note “their” refers to Zee, not us.
Johnson says, “Maybe. I’m not sure. It’s a start.”
Elizabeth talks through the logic of what happened next.
“So you went in there. You found the tablets. You took some. And you were immune to zombie bites?”
“Not quite in that order,” Steve says. “But yes.”
“We were bitten first,” I say, clarifying his point. Steve and I want to get to the bottom of everything that’s happened to us just as much as the scientists do.
Johnson wants more detail.
“There’s something else,” he says. “It’s one thing to be immune to a bite, but that doesn’t explain the behavior we’ve seen from thousands of zombies. Why did they abandon Steve in the heart of the mall? For that matter, why did they leave him alive at all? And you. Why did they let you approach him?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“And in the simulation,” Elizabeth says. “Why did one zombie attack, while another stood still?”
“And why are they here now?” Doyle asks. “What do they want from you?”
I have no answers.
“Whatever the reason,” Ajeet says. “Our first act has to be to get more of those tablets and an
alyze their content. We have to understand the mode of action.”
“I’m worried about their behavior,” Johnson says, not content to move on. “The herd is erratic. All this time, zombies have been predictable. Now, they’re unstable. Why?”
“You’re an anthropologist,” Doyle says. “Of course you’re concerned about behavior.”
Ajeet smiles, saying, “I take your point, Johnson. But for now, if we can come up with a viable treatment for a zombie bite, that has to take precedence over field research. We can explore the behavioral characteristics of the undead at some other time.”
“The Tesla is charged,” Doyle says. “I can be there and back by sundown.”
“I’m going with you,” I say, unsure what a Tesla is, but feeling compelled to accompany Doyle.
“You’re not trained for this,” Doyle says.
“Doyle will be wearing a space suit,” Ajeet explains. “Even then, the suits aren’t invisible. They’re no guarantee you won’t be attacked. They lessen the odds, but one tear, just a tiny rip, and you might as well be standing there naked.”
“You’ll need me to identify the tablets,” I say, insisting.
“I could go,” Steve offers, but he’s in no condition to take on zombies.
“You need to rest,” Elizabeth says. She’s right.
“This is all my fault,” I say. “Let me help.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ajeet says, emphatically. “Zombies have brought this upon us, not you.”
I’m not sure Doyle agrees with Ajeet, but he seems to soften to the idea of having me tag along.
“All right. Me and the girl,” he says.
“Hazel,” I say, refusing to be intimidated by him.
“Hazel and I will retrieve what we can.”
Doyle gets to his feet and we follow him out of the control room.
As we walk down the corridor, Ajeet says, “We’ll monitor your progress from here. Don’t worry, Hazel. We’ll be in constant radio contact. You’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t worried until Ajeet insisted I would be fine. In theory, wearing a space suit sounds fun. Anything that avoids attracting attention from zombies is a good idea, but I suspect there’s more to this than I realize.
“Are you going to be okay?” Steve asks quietly as we walk into a laboratory.
“I’ll be fine,” I say, echoing Ajeet’s words. “In and out. We’ll get some of those tablets and we’ll leave. We’ll be back before you know it.”
The laboratory is a broad, open plan room, but a false wall separates one half of the room from the other. Floor-to-ceiling glass panels divide the room. There are space suits hanging on the walls, along with backpacks in various states of repair.
“Let’s get you suited up,” Elizabeth says, taking her own suit off and stashing it on a workbench. She strips down to what looks like a pair of long johns, but there’s a mesh of tiny tubes and wires woven into the material.
Elizabeth remains in her long johns, handing me an identical set. The material is stiff and thick.
“Put this on.”
I strip down to my tank top and tight shorts, slipping into the long johns feet first. It takes some effort to stretch the shoulders back far enough to slip my arms into the sleeves. Elizabeth pulls a zipper up my front, and I feel my insides compress with the material.
“This is a thermal undergarment,” she says. “It’s water cooled. Even with our stripped-down suits, you’ll be carrying close to a hundred and fifty pounds. You won’t be able to move quickly. Doyle will get you as close as he can in the Tesla.
“These suits are completely self-contained. They’re hermetically-sealed. No air comes in. No air goes out. Everything is either stored or recycled.
“These suits are a bunch of odds and ends, cobbled together to allow us access to the outside world.”
She’s speaking as though we’re on Mars.
Elizabeth helps me slip on the thick, outer layer of the space suit. The bulky white trousers are heavy, giving me some idea of how difficult it is going to be to move around in a spacesuit.
“It’s the seal that keeps you safe from zombies. They can’t smell you. The gold visor ensures they can’t see you. Don’t make any sudden noises and they won’t hear you.”
I nod as she positions a pair of what look like snow boots in front of me. I step into the boots, squeezing my feet firmly against the inner sole, and she fastens the seals, locking the boots and the pants together.
“You can talk to us through a headset. Just whisper and we’ll hear you loud and clear.”
I nod as she slips a skull cap over my head. A small microphone aligns with the corner of my lips and I feel hard insets position themselves over my ears, marking earphones or perhaps tiny speakers. Elizabeth adjusts the chin strap, making sure the cap is on straight.
Doyle is already suited up and waddling into what looks like an airlock leading into the sterile section of the room. He sits on a bench waiting for me. He has his visor up, chatting with Johnson and Ajeet.
Elizabeth connects a series of tubes from inside the suit with my undergarment, saying, “You’re wearing roughly half a million dollars worth of tech that really should be in a museum. Try to bring it back in one piece.”
She smiles, not wanting me to take her too seriously, and I nod in response. Joking around defuses the tension.
Steve helps Elizabeth lift the torso section of the spacesuit over my head. I feed my arms up into the bulky sleeves, feeling a little overwhelmed.
As she locks the waist band in place, Elizabeth says, “If you want to scratch your nose, now’s your last chance.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
Elizabeth fits a pair of gloves on my hands, twisting the locking mechanism in place. I feel like I’m about to launch into space. She leans inside the suit, pushing her hand down my back and fiddling with part of the undergarment. I can feel her connecting components to the outer suit.
“Okay. Helmet?” she says, gesturing to Steve. He raises the helmet over my head, lowering it gently. Both the outer golden visor and the inner glass faceplate are open so I can talk freely as Elizabeth aligns the collar ring and twists the helmet in place.
“I’m okay,” I say to Steve, even though he hadn’t actually said anything. It was the look on his face that told me he’s worried. “I’ll be fine.”
“You be careful out there,” he says. “Don’t take any risks.”
“Me?” I say, trying to sound sweet and innocent.
“All right,” Elizabeth says. “Turn around. Let’s get a look at you.”
I step forward, walking a bit like Frankenstein. I can see why they warned me about the weight of the suit. Even just a few steps is an effort. Space suits are designed for space, I decide. Up there, they’re weightless. Down here, they’re lead weights.
“Let’s get your backpack fitted,” Elizabeth says, and it’s only then I realize I’m not finished. I thought this was all the weight I had to lug around, but the heaviest part of the suit is yet to come.
“Turn around for me,” she says, gently guiding me as I twist to one side.
Elizabeth and Steve position the backpack behind me, attaching straps to the suit, hooking up air lines, electrical wires and flexible coolant pipes. Steve must be taking most of the weight as I don’t get the full force of the backpack until he steps back.
Damn!
It’s all I can do not to keel over backwards with the pack on. I lean forward, locking my knees as I struggle with the combined weight of the suit and backpack.
“Watch your balance,” Elizabeth says. “The last thing you want to do is to turtle.”
“Turtle?” I ask, not wanting to speak in anything more than single words. Single syllables would be better.
“If you fall on your back, it is extremely difficult to get up. Remember, your center of gravity is much higher and heavier than you’re used to. Also, it’s shifted to the rear, so don’t lean back or you’ll keel over.”
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br /> “Great,” I say, unable to think of anything else to say.
“If you fall, don’t rush. Take your time getting up. You’ll need to roll on your side, then onto your hands and knees. Find something to pull on to get back to your feet. Something like a chair or a desk. Whatever you do, don’t panic.”
“Got it,” I say, regretting my insistence on going along with Doyle. I just want to get this over with.
Steve helps me into the airlock. I sit next to Doyle. He’s checking his fancy gun. He ignores me. Although it’s probably not personal, it feels that way.
Elizabeth shows me the environmental controls on my suit, adjusts them and sets them running. She closes the inner glass visor, clipping a latch that locks it in place, saying, “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I say, immediately noticing my voice sounds dull and muted inside the helmet. Air circulates softly around my face, coming in from vents designed to prevent the glass from fogging up. Suddenly, I’m acutely aware of the need to scratch my nose. It’s more psychological than real. My nose twitches, and I wonder if I have time to open my helmet when Doyle stands up. Time to go.
I get to my feet slowly, turning so I can see my thick, gloved hand pushing off the bench seat. My muscles aren’t used to such arduous work, but I take my place behind Doyle, looking at the back of his white pack and his smooth helmet. The US flag on his life-support pack looks strangely out of place and yet there’s comfort in seeing it again after so long. It reminds me of another time, a better time. Red and white stripes. A blue sky full of silver stars neatly ordered. Maybe, I dare to think. Maybe we can reclaim this land. Hope lifts the heart, and that small embroidered flag raises my spirits.
The airlock door closes and I hear Elizabeth talking in my ear.
“Okay. You guys are looking good. Telemetry is coming through. Initiating clean.”
Jets of steaming hot water rush out of the walls, ceiling and floor. Doyle holds his hands out and positions his legs slightly apart, so I copy him, feeling the pitter patter of water gently striking my helmet. Tiny soap bubbles form on my suit before being washed away.
“It’s nice to be inside the car for once,” I say.
Elizabeth speaks over the headset.
All Our Tomorrows Page 18