Dead Things

by Darst, Matt

  But Ian is distressed. “What the hell do you expect me to do? Play dead?”

  “Okay, okay,” Wright raises a palm, gesturing Ian to calm down. “Come up front with me.”

  He asks, “What about the rear?”

  She is less concerned about that, and more worried about what stands before them.

  **

  Van is given the duty of point and asked to stay back while Wright and Ian crawl fifty yards farther up the road before halting in a deep patch of grass.

  “Is it safe to be here?” Ian asks, flat on his back.

  “We’re fine,” Wright replies, “barring a sudden change of wind direction.”

  Ian rolls his eyes. “Great.”

  “Okay, here,” she says. She passes him binoculars. “Take a look. But, take care not to move about too much. Any reflection from the lenses might attract it.”

  Ian shakes uncontrollably, kind of like a wet dog. He takes the binoculars in both hands in an effort to steady his hold and mask his fear.

  Wright notices. “Easy, Ian. Just take a deep breath.”

  He gawks at her in disbelief. Then, slowly, he rolls to his chest and scratches his way to the verge of the knoll. Rising on his elbows, Ian peeks.

  Emerald and gold dance before him, a twisting kaleidoscope. He stabilizes himself and takes a deep breath. The viewfinder settles upon a swath of gray. Adjusting the focus, the asphalt of U.S. 167 crystallizes in front of him. There are two lanes in each direction, separated by a median. At the top of the frame there’s an off-ramp.

  “A little more to your right,” Wright whispers.

  Ian pans. The scenery blurs and bounces until he sets his eye on the red roof of a Stucky’s. He lets his focal point drop to the entrance. He sucks air in a quick burst.

  Ian grew up conscious of his attempts to limit his exposure to the creatures, just books and TV, nothing direct. He once had a chance to see them up close on a field trip to the Cincinnati zoo. Rather, he opted to linger in the primate house. He was more comfortable with the monkeys—these unbeknownst ancestors—than the monsters that plagued his dreams.

  Kari Wright watches Ian with interest. She notices his initial gasp, the fright taking hold. She watches for signs of nervousness, twitching around the corners of his mouth or tremors in the furrow of his brow.

  But Ian seizes control. His jaw clenches and juts forward in a determined fashion. He readjusts his grip on the binoculars.

  A minute passes, and Ian lowers them. Wright moves to relieve him of their weight, but before she can take them, Ian deftly adjusts the magnification. Oblivious to her, he raises them back to his eyes and leans farther into the landscape hundreds of feet before him.

  It is hidden in the shadows of the overhang near the diesel pumps.

  Its face is gaunt, almost skeletal, but not without features of the living. Dry, dark skin stretches taught across the creature’s cheeks and forehead, the bones underneath threatening to pierce their thin veil. Vestiges of cartilage remain, the thing’s blackened ears and nose shrunken and shriveled. Shadowed by the sharp ridge of its brow, two alert eyes survey the lot before it. Bright white with dead pupils, they dart back and forth, scanning.

  Ian is struck that it remains ambulatory, despite extreme decay. “Robby,” as indicated by the name tag clinging to its shredded gas station attendant uniform, shuffles slowly in the shade between the pumps and the broken lobby entrance. It has worn a path through shattered glass that blankets the sidewalk and parking lot. Ian looks more closely. It has also worn the shoes and much of the skin from its feet. Strips of leather and tissue trail its skeletal ankles.

  Ian drops his focus. “How can there be anything left of them? Shouldn’t they have decomposed by now?”

  “I don’t know,” she lies. She has barely begun to gauge how much she should tell Ian, when suddenly she finds herself blurting out a word: “Mummification.” She says it like fact, not a guess.

  Ian’s eyebrow arches. Wright is privy to information unavailable to him and the populace in general. His lips part—

  She anticipates a question and cuts him off. “Ian, you must keep what you’ve seen to yourself, at least for a little while.” She explains that she’s only showing him this—this ghoul—because he has been manning the rear. He should be aware of the dangers surrounding them.

  And, she contemplates, this kid may just end up leading this group should something happen to me.

  Ian agrees to keep the proverbial skeleton hidden.

  They drive deeper into the woods, Wright choosing to forego both the guidance, and menace, provided by the road. The trees are safer for now. She pushes them hard, forcing them to cover nearly a dozen more miles before nightfall.

  Quiet and hungry, they devour their rations and welcome sleep in turn.

  All except for Wright and Ian, who sneak away to meet in the pitch in the shadow of a dark oak.

  “Mummies?” Ian asks.

  “No, not ‘mummies.’ Mummification,” Wright rejoins impatiently. There is a world of difference. Mummification is a process. Mummies are the result. Not mummies in the conventional sense, wrapped in gauze and stumbling about, victims of some ancient curse spelled out in hieroglyphics. Rather, preserved human remains.

  Wright’s face is different. Illuminated by traces of moonlight, she looks soft, almost serene, maybe even angelic. Ian tells her he wants to hear more.

  “Mummification is the preservation of dead bodies.” She goes into detail: tissue decomposes at varying rates, with skin and organs rotting more quickly, and connective tissue and bone taking longer. But a mummy is unlike a fossil or a skeleton; it retains soft tissue. Skin, hair, sinew…all can remain intact for years, especially if the conditions are right.

  “Hold on,” Ian interjects. “The Egyptians created mummies. These things can’t be mummies.”

  True, Wright allows. These ghouls weren’t created by people. They are not anthropogenic mummies, or mummies made by purpose. These are natural, spontaneous mummies.

  The human body needs precious little to be preserved. The Egyptians knew this. They dried out the body using salts, reducing moisture in the body, eliminating decay. Sodium increased acidity, creating an unfriendly environment for bacteria. She weighs whether this information is useful. “Stop me if you’ve heard all this before.”

  Ian shakes his head. “Not a word of it. I mean, I know about King Tut, but that’s about it.”

  Wright sighs. She’s not surprised. The practice predated Christ. Mummification was critical to ensuring a king’s rebirth in the afterlife under the watchful eye of Anubis, the god of embalming. That history is heretic today.

  These creatures, though, are different. She calls them creatures instead of mummies for good reason: unlike mummies, they are not dead, at least not in the conventional sense. These creatures are preserved naturally...in theory, anyway (she stresses that this is just a theory). But there may be things about their “condition” (another term of art) that lend themselves, perhaps, to the natural preservation of the human body.

  “For instance?” Ian’s curiosity is a fresh breath, blowing away cobwebs from the corners of her memory. Wright finds herself fully engaged. It reminds her of a spark she once had and lost long before.

  Drying the corpse, for one. Egyptian mummification rituals took only two months or so. Before the New Order, a group of scientists recreated the process using medical cadavers in about half that time. The Egyptians, like the Peruvians, positioned bodies on an incline or totally upright to use gravity to drain away fluids. Perhaps something similar happens with these creatures. They remain standing, so bodily moisture must leak away.

  “Through their feet,” Ian concluded. “Holy shit. I mean, ‘amazing.’”

  Wright half smiles. “No, you were right the first time. ‘Holy shit.’” But she digresses. There’s more. It’s conjecture…just speculation. She hasn’t any evidence to support it.

  Ian’s mouth is dry. He nods for her to con
tinue.

  She resumes. Bacteria. Fungi. Neither can grow without moisture. Both are responsible for decomposition. But the condition may retard the growth of microorganisms. Although rapid drying is common in man-made mummies, preservation can really occur anytime decay is stunted.

  Example: most microorganisms can’t live in freezing temperatures, so extreme cold in conjunction with dehydrating winds can produce a mummy.

  “Freeze-dried mummies?” Ian jokes.

  “Don’t be smart,” Wright demurs. Some have been discovered dating back more than 5000 years. But Wright suspects something different.

  Example Two: mummies were uncovered in northwest Europe in peat bogs. Microorganisms need air, and the peat seals off oxygen while the acidity of the bog preserves their tissue, giving “bog mummies” a dark brown, leather-like appearance.

  Ian’s mouth puckers. He’s confused.

  She advances her arguments, hopeful he will connect the dots. The condition may exacerbate drying and stave off decay. Whatever it is—a virus, bacteria, or other pathogen—may be out-competing bacteria and fungi for water and other natural resources. Survival of the fittest. “Ever hear of Darwin?” she asks.

  “Was he a saint?” Ian wonders.

  She almost forgets the schools don’t teach evolution anymore. She chuckles. “No, he wasn’t a saint.” She takes another tack.

  “Or, the pathogen creates an inhospitable environment through elevated pH levels, for example.” She continues, almost to herself. “That could explain the darkening of the skin.”

  Ian wants to take a step back. He asks a question. “You said mummies have been around for hundreds, even thousands of years?”

  Wright nods. Yes, they are incredibly resilient.

  He asks another question: “Do you think that these creatures are capable of that…resiliency?”

  “Lasting hundreds or thousands of years?” Wright chooses her words carefully. “According to the church, no. They’ll be swept away in the Rapture.”

  “Fine, but what do you think?”

  She ponders. The truth, after eighteen years? We know about as much now as we did back then. We haven’t even scratched the surface of understanding the mechanisms behind their existence. Short answer: “Anything’s possible.”

  Ian thinks on this a moment. “What are these things?”

  Wright dodges his question. “Like I said, they’re mummified corpses.”

  Ian senses her evasion. “No, I mean, what are they, really? Why are they here?”

  It’s a question Wright has asked herself a thousand times in some form or another. She recollects early radio reports of resurrected cadavers. The first accounts came out of southeastern Texas. Conservatives immediately seized on the issue, seeking political advantage by blaming the incidents on an illness spread by illegal aliens from Matamoros, Mexico. Within days, however, outbreaks of mob violence were inundating the eastern third of the United States, places like Pittsburgh, Charleston, and Hoboken, places with little or no connection to the third world. On TV, a scientist speculated that an explorer satellite returning to Earth after orbiting Venus was to blame. The U.S. military in an attempt to prevent some hitchhiking organism from reaching earth, he contended, had detonated the satellite in the atmosphere. NASA denied it.

  Wright sums things up for Ian: “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  Ian sighs. Whole new worlds are opening to him, but he wants to make sure he’ll be around to explore them. “Kari?”

  She doesn’t remember a time when she was called by her first name. Even Richard called her by her surname. She doesn’t know quite how to feel about it.

  Ian continues. “Would you mind talking to the Hestons for me? For us?”

  Wright agrees. “About what?”

  “About not getting us killed.”

  He’s right. She’s noticed it, too. That talk is long overdue.

  Chapter Seven: Look Who’s Coming to Dinner

  Pale, ravenous hands tear at the soil. Although it contains limestone, it has recently been stirred, and their frenzied fingers dig easily. They push against each other, bellowing as they clamor about the widening hole.

  But a set of fat fingers finds the remnants of the gauze first. Aroused by the scent of blood and pus, the others moan balefully and grope at the larger ghoul in their midst. They struggle in vain to seize the morsel, one tossing aside the small corpse of an infant in her zeal. Their mad swings, however, are futile. The fiend’s obese mitts are somehow more nimble, and they snatch the prize from the hungry claws all around.

  For tonight, this meager meal will not be shared. It is his alone.

  He swallows the gauze.

  And he wants more.

  Chapter Eight: The Reluctant Doctor

  Ian stirs early the next morning, or, at least, he thinks it’s early, as he somewhat doubts he slept at all. He was preoccupied with a world of new ideas, and they danced about his head like a jam jar full of fireflies. He’s confused, almost overwhelmed to be privy to such information, but, at the same time, he finds it invigorating.

  The ritual begins again. First, he starts down to the lavatory—a hole three-feet deep fifty paces downwind carved out by Burt the night before. Then, he brushes his teeth with a scentless baking powder mixture. This he follows with a weak, non-scented deodorant.

  Soon, however, he will need a proper bath, as will they all.

  He glimpses Wright across the campsite. He stares, maybe a tad too long, and she catches him. She blinks, then turns to business again. She stoops down to wake the Hestons.

  Ian walks the perimeter of the camp quietly avoiding waking Jessica.

  She’s curled in the fetal position, and she whimpers slightly as Ian passes. Nightmares, too? Perhaps Ian will talk to her today.

  He approaches Van. Van is slumbering front to back with the blonde, spooning (although he’s sure Van would rather fork), arms about her to keep off the chill, a puddle of dirty drool pooled about his cheek. Ian considers “accidentally” tripping over the couple, but instead angles toward the camp’s makeshift latrine. He is in better spirits today, and he will not allow his jealousy to further eat away at him.

  Today Wright decides to change the pairings. She decides Ian will be point. She instructs him to stay to the edge, to be overly cautious. He is overjoyed to be anywhere, even if alone, other than behind the Hestons.

  Wright is pleased that he is pleased, but she has other reasons, personal reasons, for this modification. Her discussion with Ian stirred a scrap of something buried, some remnant of who she used to be, a person who probed rather than accepted the status quo. What are they, really? Why are they here? Early on it didn’t matter. Everyone was just trying to survive. But it’s eighteen years out, and it is time for people to start caring, regardless of the church’s position. Wright wants answers, and she decides to create her own opportunity to test some ideas and do a little recognizance.

  Wright teams with Dr. Heston for the day. They exchange formalities for an hour before Wright surreptitiously digs into his past…

  Heston wasn’t always a doctor.

  No, his first love is animals. Not people.

  He completed veterinary school at the University of Illinois twenty years before. Two years later, when the epidemic hit, he was working in an emergency animal clinic in southern Illinois. Just months later, the event was pandemic, infecting with 100% communicability, and killing—so to speak—with 100% certainty.

  The medical community was hit hard. Safety protocols could not reduce the likelihood of transmission. The disease spread too quickly, replicating and taking over the host in mere hours or less.

  It decimated staff, filled emergency rooms, and overwhelmed those brave souls who remained at their posts. There weren’t resources or grant funding to study the pathology or infectivity—ingress to the host, survival in the host, and spread.

  And spread it did. Crossing the globe in just one spin on its axis.

  So containment,
rather than treatment, became the operative word. And veterinarians, like Heston, were pressed into service to fill the void left by the early responders, like EMTs, nurses, and physicians.

  Does Dr. Heston mind questions about his work?

  “Not at all,” Heston replies with a wink, “And please, call me Neil.” He’s happy for a respite from his wife and their bickering.

  Wright obliges. “Neil, do you have a hypothesis about the origins of the walking dead?”

  Heston chokes. He can’t believe she’s asked that question. To speculate is heresy, but he finds himself compelled to answer. “Of course, it must be off the record.”

  “Of course,” Wright grants.

  The subject matter is taboo, so Heston chooses his words carefully to protect himself. “Some in the medical community speculated that a pathogen might be involved. They suspected a virus.”

  But his response begs additional questions, and Wright sees her opportunity to push the envelope just a little further. She needs to give him an out, though. “Tell me more about what those practitioners said.”

  Heston sighs. He’s wanted to tell his story—confess his sins—for years.

  **

  Heston and a team of local veterinarians accompanied the Illinois National Guard into Kentucky. Guard units were dispatched across borders upon orders of the President himself to the nearest urban centers. Heston volunteered to assist in Louisville.

  He could never have known the horror that awaited him at Baptist Hospital East.