As we climbed the hill, Sam said: "Pete, I have to show you something before we leave. Something important. Vanessa should see it too."
"Show me what?" I asked.
"You'll see," he told me. "We just need to run by my house. It won't take ten minutes."
At the top of the hill, the trees opened into a giant clearing where most of the original college buildings stood. They were ancient structures with frowning, unperturbed gargoyles who had seen it all (a civil war, two world wars, and now a zombie uprising). When we emerged from the trees, the helicopters circling overhead came into view. There were three of them. One was huge-a military transport, big enough to carry trucks-with two enormous blades. The others were smaller. Escorts, but well armed by the looks of it.
As we assembled and pointed, they hovered tentatively.
"Stay where you are," I said to the group, and made a little "stay" motion with my hand. Then I walked forward into the empty vibrating grass, separating myself from the group. I took off my hat, held it up, and pointed at it.
For a moment, this changed nothing. (I wondered if I should give the finger again, as I had before. That had certainly elicited a reaction.) But then the largest helicopter began a gradual descent, carefully landing its enormous bulk between an administrative building and the college library.
Even when the enormous craft was settled on the ground, the giant blades continued to rotate. The sound was deafening. A metal door in the helicopter's side lowered on hydraulics, and soldiers with machine guns began to emerge.
I put my hat back on, and walked over to Sam.
"Give me a gun," I told him.
"What?" he said.
"Give me a gun," I repeated.
Sam obeyed, handing me an automatic pistol.
"Good," I told him. "The rest of you should probably drop your weapons. We want to look friendly, right?"
There was general agreement, and a casting aside of firearms took place.
"Why are you hanging on to a gun?" Sam asked.
"I expect this might require a little negotiation," I told him, and set off toward the soldiers emerging from the craft.
The soldiers, twenty or so, stayed close to the helicopter and held their weapons at the ready. I approached them slowly, with the pistol in my left hand, pointed down at the grass.
"Who do I-" I tried to say, but it was obvious that I would not be heard above the helicopter's enormous rotors.
With my free hand, I pointed to both of the giant blades, and made a slitting-my-throat gesture.
The soldiers just looked at me.
I crossed my arms like I was pissed off, and we just stood there.
After a few moments, one of the soldiers began signaling to the others in a complicated series of hand gestures. The final gesture was a point in my direction. Half of the soldiers sprang up and began approaching me, guns raised. One of them carried a giant net with heavy metal balls connected to it.
As the men drew close, I put up my right hand to say "stop," and with my left raised the automatic pistol to my temple. The soldiers continued to advance, but looked at one another.
To show them I was serious, I put the gun barrel in my mouth, cocked the trigger, and slowly fell to my knees.
The soldier in front lifted' his right arm as if hailing me. The soldiers behind him stopped. I stared the lead soldier hard in the face. Then I pointed once again to each of the helicopter rotors.
He studied me cautiously.
I shrugged.
Regarding me warily-never taking his eyes from mine-the soldier reached into his helmet and pulled out an intercom receiver. He brought it to his mouth and spoke. A few moments later, the sound of dying machinery could be heard, and the two enormous helicopter blades ground to a halt. I could once again hear myself think.
I took the gun barrel out of my mouth and slowly stood.
"Was that so hard?" I asked the lead soldier in a quiet whistle.
There was no reply. The man seemed unused to jibes. They all did. (I noted, warily, that one of them still had his throwable net at the ready.) I returned the pistol to my temple.
"Whom do I have the honor of addressing?" I asked the soldier in my zombie-rasp. "I don't need your whole military title. I'm a first-name kind of guy."
"Staff Sergeant Roger," he responded.
"Your name is Roger-or are you `rogering' something?" I asked. "Like: `Roger that."'
"It's my name," he said.
I noticed, though they were small, that Roger seemed to have more stripes stitched into his shoulder than the others.
"Nice to meet you, Roger," I told him. "Let's get down to business. I'm the Kernel, and you're here to take me back `alive.' In exchange for me, you're airlifting a group of civilians to the Green Zone in Columbus. Have I got it right so far?"
"That's correct," the soldier said. Though his demeanor was still deadly serious, I noticed a flash of wonderment in his eyes each time I spoke. This man had likely seen as many zombies as anyone, but one who could address him and hold a pistol was still a marvel, even to a hardened military man.
I remembered the helicopter stuck in the legs of the water tower in Marengo, and what he'd said about my mythic status. I wondered, based on that, if Roger had volunteered to lead this mission, or if they'd drawn lots and he'd lost.
"Roger, you're very close to completing your objective here," I told him. "There's just one problem. I want you to give these people twenty minutes to collect their things from around the college, and to make sure everyone here gets on board. I also need to go away myself for a few minutes, but I will be right back."
Roger opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
"Here's your problem," I told him. "I'm a zombie. I mean, I see that guy over there with the net. And you can throw it if you want to, but the moment he does, I'm pulling this trigger. And then, boom, mission failed. Am I right?"
My tone had turned flippant, and Roger did not dignify it with a response.
"You can taze me," I continued. "You can shoot me with a tranquilizer dart. You can even try tear gas. Will it work? Hell, I don't know ... We're all making this up as we go along, aren't we? But what I'm telling you is that you're twenty minutes away from completing this mission. Twenty minutes from being the guy who brought in the Kernel. But you've got to decide: Do you trust me? If you do, then we all go get our stuff and get on the helicopters and boom, we're gone. If you try anything else-and I mean anything else-I shoot myself through the forehead right now, and you fail. Am I making myself clear? Is there anything about this you don't understand?"
He looked at me, then looked over at his men and flashed another hand signal. The men looked at one another-as if they could not quite believe it had been the right one-and slowly lowered their weapons. Even net-guy relaxed, letting the heavy metal balls attached to the webbing clunk against one another on the ground.
"If you're lying-" said Roger. I didn't let him finish the sentence.
"I'm not lying," I told him. "Now hold your fucking horses, and we'll be right back."
Vanessa and I followed Sam across the rapidly darkening campus. Here and there, residents readied themselves for the airlift. Puckett passed us pulling an overloaded suitcase with a keyboard sticking out of it. Dr. Bowles could be seen carefully pushing a long-retired emeritus-doddering in his wheelchair-across the quad toward the waiting helicopter.
We took a dirt trail the students had forced into the expensive college landscaping and cut between two low dormitories, into the neighborhood of modest houses behind, where professors lived. We passed the familiar Wiggum Street, where my home could be found, and eased our way east through empty yards. At the end of a block, we ran into a tiny square house with a red roof. Sam's place.
Sam motioned for us to wait on the front porch, then trudged around the side of the house. We heard a sound like a lawn mower struggling to start, followed by the steady hum of a generator. I let my hand rest idly on the butt of the gun.
&
nbsp; Vanessa gave me a look as if to say What? You still don't trust him?
I shrugged and left my hand on the gun. Moments later, Sam returned. He registered my hand on my weapon but said nothing as he brushed past us.
"C'mon," Sam said, fumbling to unlock his door. "It doesn't have much juice left."
We followed him inside. I let Vanessa go first. Sam's tiny square house was almost as cluttered as mine, and smelled just as funny.
Sam conducted us up a dingy flight of stairs covered in vomitgreen carpet. At the top, we turned down a narrow, cheaply paneled hallway. It terminated in a cluttered home-office. Sam kicked away piles of papers, books, and clothes, until the three of us could stand comfortably inside.
On a desk in one corner was a laptop with a nicotine-stained keyboard. Sam turned it on, and we waited for it to boot up.
"I knew it would be a bad scene if I ever had to show this to somebody," Sam said, as he entered passwords and opened files. "But Jesus Christ, I never thought I'd have to show it to you."
"What do you mean?" I asked him.
"Here, just watch," Sam said. He opened a file and it spawned a media player. Sam let it load for a few seconds, then hit the play button. The dark screen came alive, and I was confronted with myself. My pre-zombie, pre-winter-in-the-woods self. My hair was combed. My clothes were not full of holes. My skin was ruddy and red, as though I'd had a few drinks. I looked drained-not in a zombie way, but in a human way. My stare was empty, as though I saw into great cosmic distances. Of all of the horrible things I'd seen since waking up as a zombie, this battered, broken version of my living self was one of the most unnerving.
"Hello," I said in the video. My voice was strong and hale compared to the creaks I managed now, but utterly bereft of emotion or inflection.
"If you're watching this," I continued, "then there's been some question about the way that I died, or who was involved. So let me ... let me use this video to set everything straight. My name is Peter Mellor. I'm a professor at Kenton College. Sam tells me this video should be automatically dated by the computer, but in case there's any question ..." The video-me reached down and held up a copy of the Columbus Dispatch. The front page featured the words "moving cadavers" in no less than three headlines.
"This is the last newspaper that got out this far," the video-me said. "Anyhow, I'm making this to tell you that I took my own life, and nobody else was involved. Especially not Sam Horst. I cut my own brake lines so my car would crash somewhere at the bottom of the hill at Kenton College. I did this intentionally, so I wouldn't get afraid and change my mind halfway down. I did it all myself. Sam showed me where the brake lines were on my car, but that was it. Sam did nothing else. I cut the brakes."
Next to me, Vanessa put her hand on what was left of my shoulder. I started.
"Okay," the video-me said. "That should do it, right? Pretty clear?"
The video-me looked as though he thought the matter was concluded, but the bar on the media player showed that the presentation was not yet half finished.
"You want to say anything to Vanessa?" said a voice from offstage in the video. I realized it was Sam.
The video-me looked perturbed, and narrowed his eyes at the offstage video-Sam. There was a long, silent pause.
"C'mon, what if Vanessa has to see this?" video-Sam said. "It could happen. You never know."
The video-me sighed.
"I don't know ..." I said from the screen. "I guess I should say that I'm sorry. I did it like this so my death wouldn't hurt you. So it would appear to be an accident, and you wouldn't have to know. I love you, and I don't want you to blame yourself."
"And why are you doing this?" said offscreen Sam. "Tell Vanessa-or whoever-why you're doing this."
Video-me shot the unseen assistant another annoyed glance.
"I'm doing this because I'm a weak man," video-me said flatly. "I'm doing this because I know I'm not going to be able to cope with things-with the way the world is going these days. There are these zombies, eating people, and they're just horrible. I can't imagine anything more horrible. And it looks like soon there won't be food or laws or civilization anymore, either. I know that Vanessa is going to need me to be there for her, and I know I can't he. I'm not brave. I'm weak. I'm fat and a drunk. I can hardly take care of myself, much less, you know ... other people. I'm not going to be able to function in this new world. I don't want her to have to see me not functioning. I don't want her to count on me and have me let her down."
Emotion began to creep into the voice of the video-me. The eyes gleamed with a suggestion of tears.
"There's no way I can be there for her and her kids. I was barely holding it together before, you know? Just barely. And now, with these goddamn zombies ... I can't, I can't ... I'm just not built for this." The video-me abruptly stood up and walked offscreen.
"That's enough," video-me said from somewhere. "That's all I need to say. You can turn off the camera."
Sam powered down the laptop.
"I killed myself," I said, thinking how that was probably not a sentence that got said much. By anyone. Ever.
"Bingo," Sam responded.
"Wow," I said. "I guess I owe you an apology. Thanks for making this."
"Thank yourself," he said. "It was your idea. I didn't want to do it. Seemed morbid to me. Unnecessary."
Sam turned and began gathering up a few things from around his cluttered office.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I asked him.
"Huh?" Sam said as he stuffed a filthy overcoat into a duffel bag.
"All those times before when we were together," I said to him. "You could have just told me `You killed yourself' or something. Instead, you only said that you didn't do it."
"I liked having you back," Sam said. "I didn't want you to remember that you didn't want to live. I didn't want you to get sad again. Maybe you'd even kill yourself again-become the first zombie to commit suicide."
"Huh," I said. "Well, don't worry. I don't want to do that."
"That's good," Sam said, giving up on the overcoat and shoving in a series of sweatshirts instead.
Behind me, I heard a noise like a small animal struggling to breathe. I turned to see an overwhelmed Vanessa leaning against the doorframe. She was whimpering and looking at her shoes.
"It's okay, Vanessa," I said, moving to her. She leaned at such a precarious angle, I was afraid she might fall.
"No, it's not," she said.
"Really," I told her. "It's fine. I don't want to kill myself anymore. I'm 100 percent better."
"But the old you did ... and he did," she said. "And you aren't who you were before. That was a different man. And that manwho I loved, and who I just watched on that computer screenkilled himself. And I don't know why he couldn't talk to me instead. Why he couldn't just man up and say what he was afraid of. I mean, I understand that he didn't feel like he could deal with ... things ... But it makes me so sad that-what? He thought it would be better for me to think he'd died in a car accident? That's horrible!"
"I'm-" I started.
"Don't, Peter," Vanessa said, cutting me off. "Don't say you're the same person, because you're not. Don't say you're sorry, either, because you can't be. You're not the man I fell in love with. You're not the man who went on walks with me. You're not the man who sat and graded papers with me. He was good and sweet and I loved him, and ... he killed himself. Because he didn't feel like he could talk to me."
Vanessa's last sentence was garbled and nearly lost. She began to sob.
"I wasn't going to say that I'm that man," I told her. "But I care about you. And I do have some memories and feelings. And I am a man. Sort of "
She waved her hand dismissively.
"He's right," Sam interjected fr om across the room. "This Peter isn't the old Peter ... but he is a Peter."
"What're you talking about?" Vanessa said, overcoming her urge to sob, at least for the moment.
"Well, what if Peter-the old Peter-had just hit
his head and got amnesia, like we thought had happened at first?" Sam said, now filling a second bag of clothes. "Think about it ... Would you still love that Peter-with-amnesia? Would you love him even if he'd forgotten your first kiss, and your favorite food, and the last secret you told him? Would you still love him?"
"I guess I would," Vanessa granted.
"Seems to me this is a bit like that," Sam said, continuing to stuff. "A Peter who lost his memory would be essentially the same man inside. And I think this Peter has tried to show you who he really is. He's risked himself to save you-and your kids and other people-several times. Hell, he's thrown his `life' away to do it. He even tried to save me, and he thought I'd killed him.
"He's also fought the inclination to eat people-which, from what I understand, feels really fucking good. So ... I dunno, Vanessa ... You can stand there and say it's not the same man, and you'll be right on some level. But as for me, I prefer to concentrate on the part of Peter that's the same between this one and the old one. The part that's still here now."
I was beginning to feel more like a ghost than a zombie. I was there, but only in a leftover sense. But maybe leftover was better than nothing.
"Okay," said Vanessa, to Sam and then to me. "Okay."
"What?" I asked.
"I said, okay," she clarified.
"Okay?" I asked back. "Just like that?"
"Yeah," she said. "Just like that."
"I mean, I know I'm not the same man, even though I have some of his memories," I said in a raspy rush of words. "And I can't do some of the things he could. My dick doesn't work, for one. But I have good feelings for you, Vanessa. You know, maybe this time around, we're just friends. But what the fuck, right? That could be cool."
"Shhh," she said, putting up two fingers to stop my anatomychart lips. "That's fine. I'll take it, you know? I'll take you. Like this. The way you are. I'll take it."
Zombie, Ohio Page 30