by Joe McKinney
“Anybody can find a zombie, doctor. Just go outside the walls and make a lot of noise. You’ll find plenty in no time.”
The military, Knopf thought. Such fools. They couldn’t even come up with new jokes, much less open their minds to new possibilities. It was no wonder they were getting their butts handed to them on the battlefield. And if Captain Fisher was any indication of the kind of officer the High Command was turning out, the future looked bleak indeed.
“Yes,” Knopf said, “but the trick, as I’m sure they taught you in your officer training school, is to find the enemy before they find you. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“We already have sensors, doctor. The robots can detect zombies with an eighty-six percent accuracy rate. In my opinion, that’s—”
“Hardly an acceptable margin of error,” Knopf said, shaking his head. “Not when lives are on the line. And eighty-six percent is nothing compared to what Jimmy’s capable of. Wait until we arrive in Mill Valley, captain. Your robots claim to have cleared the town of every last zombie. What will happen if that boy in there is able to lead us to even one zombie? What will you say then?”
“It’ll never happen.”
“All I ask is for you to keep an open mind, captain,” Knopf said.
“You’re asking me to believe in mumbo jumbo, doctor. I prefer to put my faith in robots and bullets.”
Knopf glanced over at Jimmy. The boy was tossing in his sleep. Nerves, probably. Or bad dreams. Poor kid. Sleep was usually the only time his mind got any rest, the only time he could turn off his gift.
“Just you wait, captain. Tomorrow, that boy’s going to make a believer out of you.”
2
“All stop!” Fisher shouted.
The expedition ground to a halt. They’d been walking for hours, and the clattering and clanking and whirring of a full company of robots had made a tremendous racket that even now, in the sudden silence that followed the captain’s command, continued to ring in Jimmy Finder’s ears.
But the ringing only lasted a moment. Once the racket faded, the pulsing images of the dead flooded back into his brain. The town was definitely not clear. He could sense hundreds of pulses going off all around him, like he was standing in the middle of a huge orchestra made of nothing but big bass drums, all of them pounding out a violent and relentless and tuneless rhythm.
He groaned in misery, wanting only to curl up in his hammock and fall asleep. Going outside like this, with nothing to shield him from all those morphic pulses, was crippling. Dr. Knopf had tried to teach him a few tricks to get rid of the pain, like focusing on a single thought-presence and letting everything else fall away, but most of the tricks were too hard to do outside of the lab. And right now, he could barely open his eyes his head hurt so badly.
I can’t do this, he thought.
James.
Jimmy stiffened in alarm. He looked around, uncertain who was talking to him. He was surrounded by Troopbots. They had no faces, only curved, featureless metal plates that they turned toward their human masters whenever they needed to speak or were spoken to, but none of them were looking at him now. They stood like statues, tall and mute in the settling dust and gloom of evening.
And there were no humans anywhere around him. Dr. Knopf and the soldiers had moved to the shade of the portico of a deserted gas station, talking in hushed tones. Knopf wasn’t even looking in his direction.
It is you, isn’t it? My God, how long I’ve waited!
That time the voice was so strong it caused his eyes to fly open wide. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, as though from static electricity. He could feel the blood rush to his head. He was dizzy, his cheeks flushed with an uncomfortable heat. It wasn’t just a voice, he realized, but a thought. A thought with weight, with force behind it.
The sensation didn’t last long, though. The dizziness faded. A cold sweat replaced the heat on his cheeks. He had a very real, almost tangible sense of the contact fading. The next instant, all trace of the link—yes, that was it; it had been a link he felt, like another mind wrapping its grip around his mind—echoed away, leaving him confused and feeling somehow vulnerable.
Again he looked around.
No one was paying him any attention.
He cocked his head to one side, trying to make sense of what he had just felt. Dr. Knopf had always said his power was of a class known as remote viewing. He could sense zombies, locate them with a degree of precision the machines couldn’t even begin to approach, but only that. He had never heard voices before. Thought-speech was out of the range of his abilities, much as people were unable to hear the high-pitched tones of a dog whistle. And for that Jimmy was supposed to be thankful. Dr. Knopf had told him so, and his own short excursions outside the lab had backed that up. It was hard enough holding on to his sanity while sensing the morphic fields that emanated from the dead. If he could hear the thoughts of the living as well . . .
But then, what was happening to him? Was this something new?
The expedition had stopped on a hill road above the little town of Mill Valley. Jimmy walked through the perfectly ordered rows of Troopbots and continued on until he was well out in front of the rest of the expedition. From here, he could look down on the whole expanse of the ruined town. The mind-voice was coming from somewhere down there, under the rubble.
Cautiously, one small bit at a time, he opened his mind and searched the ruins. This always hurt, even in the controlled circumstances of the laboratory, but he was curious.
Gritting his teeth, he sent out a thought:
Who are you? How do you know my name?
Jimmy waited, his mind open and unguarded.
Who are you?
But there was nothing. Not even the morphic pulsing of a zombie’s brain. The evening gloom settling over the town was like a burial shroud, silent and unfathomably deep. Was it any wonder it frightened him so?
3
Why won’t you answer me!
The mind-voice slashed like a knife through Jimmy’s sleep. He flinched awake, eyes shooting open in panic. His breaths were coming in fast, shallow gulps, his body soaked with sweat.
Please stop! Oh, God, please stop. You’re hurting me!
He sent the thought out in desperation. His head felt like it was about to split open, like there was a crazy little man inside there going to town with a hatchet on his brain.
I need help. I need help now!
Jimmy gasped. The pain was coming in waves now. He gritted his teeth against it, tensing the muscles in his temples, and surprisingly, that helped a little. The pain started to ebb away.
Who are you?
But there was no need to ask the question, for now that the pain was no longer tearing him apart, Jimmy knew.
The mind-voice belonged to his father.
Yes, James! It’s me! Oh, thank God you’ve come!
They told me you were dead.
Jimmy dropped out of the hammock he’d slung between the gas pumps of the abandoned gas station and staggered numbly toward the moonlit road, where the robots stood in silent, perfectly ordered rows.
They told me you were dead.
Do I sound dead to you? James, come to me. I need help. Nodding slowly, transfixed by the mind-voice pulling him toward the town, Jimmy began to walk.
4
The silence hanging over the town was massive. Jimmy could feel it like a presence, vast and powerful, full of menace.
Many people had died here. In the four days since the army retook the town the birds and the rats had descended on the corpses that were still heaped in the gutters and had begun to feast. The carrion feeders watched him silently as he passed, their eyes gleaming yellow and full of hate, their bodies wet with gore. So many dead, Jimmy thought. Such a terrible waste. Instinctively, he found himself emptying his mind, measuring his breathing, the way Dr. Knopf had taught him, so that he could stay calm when facing the horror of a badly decomposed zombie.
But not even Dr. Kn
opf’s calming lessons prepared him for the horror of this place. The fighting here must have been intense. Besides the bodies and the carrion feeders, hardly a wall was free of bullet holes. A few of the buildings had been reduced to rubble. Many more were burned to blackened skeletons.
And no matter where he looked, no matter what road he took, the silence was everywhere.
Daddy, which way?
Daddy.
That word stopped him, and he couldn’t help but smile. It sounded funny to him. He’d spent his entire life an orphan, the subject of countless stupid tests, trying to justify what he did for people who seemed only interested in mocking him and treating him like a freak—and now here he was calling for his daddy
The military men already thought of him as a runt, he knew that. What would they think of him now? They’d call him pathetic. Or worse. But what did they know? They weren’t orphans. They hadn’t walked in his shoes, cried his tears, felt the kind of heartsick loneliness that carried him off to sleep each night. Screw them. So what if he walked around the world calling for his daddy? What did they know about it?
Feeling mean, feeling bitter, Jimmy wandered the ruins, searching for a way down under the town. He sent out his mind-voice constantly, trying to get his father to answer. But he never felt anything more than a curious tickling sensation at the base of his skull. Even as he opened up more and more, out of desperation, there was nothing but the town’s foreboding silence.
And then, he found it. A way down.
He had turned down an alleyway because he sensed it was the right way to go, and that same feeling had led him to a half-hidden flight of stairs. They terminated in a rusted metal doorway marked:
MILL VALLEY WATER AUTHORITY
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
This was it.
The hint of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. Trust your instincts, Knopf had told him. Well, he had trusted his instincts, and they led right where he wanted to go.
Then Jimmy wriggled the knob.
Locked, damn it.
He rammed it with his shoulder and only managed to hurt himself.
Out of frustration, he picked up a piece of rebar from the sidewalk and banged on the knob until it snapped off.
The hinges groaned as the door fell open.
Leaning forward, he peered into the darkness, gagging on the noisome stench of sewage coming up from the levels below. Jimmy opened his mind, intending to find his father’s mind-voice, but instead was hit by something else.
Do not go down there.
“What?” Jimmy said. As before, he looked around, because this voice was different from his father’s. It seemed to be someone talking to him. But he was alone. A sheet of newspaper, carried by a breeze, drifted down the empty street. Nothing else moved.
“Who’s talking?” Jimmy asked.
If you go down there you will die.
“Tell me who you are,” Jimmy insisted.
This is Comm Six. State your designation.
“My designation? What the . . . I’m Jimmy.”
He shook his head, trying to make sense of the sensation the voice was causing in his ears. It wasn’t a voice. Not exactly. It was a mind-voice, like his father’s, but very different. Where his father’s voice was a spike trying to hammer its way into his brain, this voice was like insects buzzing around in his head. And yet it was just as clear, just as insistent, as his father’s. Only it was . . . soothing somehow. Not at all harsh.
What’s a Comm Six?
I am Comm Six.
Yeah, but what does that mean? Who are you? How come you can talk to me?
I am a Combot. I directed the robots that fought to retake this town. I was damaged. I was left behind.
I’ve never heard of a Combot. And you don’t sound like any robot I’ve ever heard of.
I am not like other robots. I am a Combot. I am sentient.
Sentient? What’s that mean?
It means that I am aware of my own presence. I know there is a me and a you and that we are different from each other. I can think.
Can’t other robots do that, like Warbots?
Not like I do. Warbots have adaptive programming. They have built-in algorithms that allow them to interpret their environment within a narrow variety of preprogrammed ways. I do not have those limitations. My thinking is based on nonlinear models, more like your own.
I’ve never heard of robots being able to do stuff like that.
I was an experiment.
Jimmy laughed. “Uh-huh. You and me both.”
Why do you laugh? You are in danger. Do not go into the sewers. There are many zombies down there still.
I don’t sense any. Usually I can sense the zombies. That’s what I do.
Perhaps the lead residue is blocking you.
I don’t get blocked. My sensors aren’t like yours. And besides, my dad’s down there.
A pause.
There are only zombies down below.
Yeah?
Yes.
Well, I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?
5
The ground shook beneath the Warbot’s weight. To Knopf it looked like some grossly deformed Tyrannosaurus Rex, a tank on two monstrously thick mechanical legs. It advanced down the rubble-strewn ruins of Oak Street and stopped in front of Fisher, bowing its enormous head down to eye level with the captain in a whir of servos and pneumatic sighs.
“We have searched the town, sir. The sensors do not register the boy or his ankle monitor.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t go somewhere else. He’s here.”
A pause.
“What are your orders, sir?”
“Find him.”
“We have scanned everywhere, sir.”
“You haven’t scanned where he’s at. Scan again. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Warbot left to resume its search.
“Trouble?” Knopf asked to the young captain’s back.
“It’s all the lead dust,” Fisher said, turning on him. The captain adjusted the surgical mask he wore, clearly frustrated with it. Mill Valley’s smelting factory had been destroyed during the fight to retake the town and it scattered lead particulates and aerosolized bits of brick all over everything. The masks were uncomfortable, tending as they did to trap sweat at the corners of the mouth, making the wearer feel like they were constantly drooling, but they were absolutely necessary. No one wanted to breathe in that stuff. Especially because the robots kicked so much of it up into the air. “It’s playing havoc with the robots, everything from their sensors to their servos. It’s no wonder we lost so many robots in the fight.”
“Or that you misstated the presence of zombies here.”
“You have no basis to support that comment, doctor.”
Fair enough, Knopf thought, and nodded.
They had already looked over a good part of the town, and even now, the Troopbots were sifting through buildings and overgrown lots, continuing the search. But even with the robots tirelessly performing their duties, Knopf couldn’t help but feel frustrated. He’d grown used to Jimmy’s precise directions, his ability to describe exactly where a zombie was hidden, and the waiting and the uncertainty of doing it the military’s way was maddening.
Before Jimmy, everyone believed the zombies were nothing more than dead-meat husks. Beyond a few weak electrical impulses in the reptilian core of their brains, which generated the morphic fields that allowed them to find each other and to move around, searching for living brains, the zombies were thought to have no neurological function whatsoever. Certainly they retained no sense of self, no memories, no desires. They possessed only an insatiable need to feed on living tissue. Most scientists stopped short, however, of accepting Knopf’s ideas of morphic fields. That was, until Jimmy came along.
Knopf remembered asking him once how he did it, what it felt like to sense a dead man’s mind.
“It hurts,” Jimmy had said. “Beyo
nd that, it’s hard to describe.”
But then, several months later, on a foggy morning in early May, the two of them had taken a walk outside the lab, and through the dense screen of fog they’d seen sentries up on the walls, picking their way with flashlights, the beams muted but distinct in the sodden air.
Jimmy had stopped and stared.
Knopf continued walking for a few steps, and then turned back to see what was wrong.
“That right there,” Jimmy said, pointing at the flashlight beams bobbing on the wall. “That’s what it looks like in my head.”
“When you sense the zombies, you mean?”
“Yeah. It looks like that. Like flashlight beams in the fog. Only the light feels like a current, you know? Like the way you can feel water moving over your skin. Or how you can sense static electricity when it makes the hairs stand up on your arms.”
The description had impressed Knopf. Little moments like that had brought them closer together, and if he wasn’t exactly a father to Jimmy, he imagined he at least qualified as a benevolent uncle.
“If the boy’s around here, we’ll find him,” Fisher said.
Knopf realized he’d been drifting. He glanced at Fisher, a vacant look on his face.
“Doctor? Did you hear me? I said we’ll find him.”
Knopf nodded.
“Why do you suppose he ran off?”
“I don’t know,” Knopf answered truthfully. “It hurts his head terribly to be out of the laboratory like this. There’s so much mind-noise.”
The captain rolled his eyes. “Well, if he can’t handle the heat, sounds like he needs to get out of the kitchen.”