Zombies! (Episode 6): Barriers Collapse

by Ivan Turner

  Shawn's parents had blamed him. He expected no less, but it was still difficult to have to withstand their venom.

  Smith had nothing to report. Over the last two days, the Angus Construction yard had remained inactive. They'd caught sight of a couple of zombies stumbling across the grounds but none of them matched Shawn's description. That, at least, was good news. The other portion of Smith's assignment was to investigate any other sites that might house scores of the undead. He had teams going from abandoned warehouses to unused dock sites. There was nothing so far.

  Satisfied with the report if not the results, Heron left Smith and went in search of Culph. The press conference had left him with the bitter taste of doubt in his mouth. His mind kept going back to the policeman zombie that had taken shots at Culph and his squad in the basement of Saint Francis church Saturday morning. It wasn't just the fact that the thing had had the wherewithal to pull the trigger. According to Culph, and according to what Heron had witnessed on Culph's shoulder camera, the other zombies had fallen in behind the cop. It looked very much to witnesses as if they were waiting for him to do the most damage so that they could then swarm forward. This troubled Heron. The first was Stemmy. It had been three months since his partner had been bitten by Zoe Koplowitz and had subsequently died from the infection. Three months since Heron had fulfilled his promise to prevent Stemmy from becoming a zombie himself by shooting Stemmy's lifeless body in the head. If there was a measure of intelligence inside those zombie brains, then perhaps he was guilty of murder. He wasn't sure he could live with that. Then again, an alleged intelligence didn't seem to stop them from killing and eating live human beings. It would have been much worse to have to face Stemmy under those circumstances.

  Culph wasn't at his desk. He hadn't been in the day before but Heron hadn't thought twice about it. Though he saw Culph almost every day, Heron was the only one required to work seven days a week. Everyone else got to take a break from the zombie menace, spend time with their families and friends, and forget the danger for a little while. With Culph, though, the danger was his family. It was his best friend. For him to take two days off despite being sent home Saturday after the church incident, seemed odd.

  Heron checked the basement next. There were sixteen men down there running drills. Al Henry, one of the first men to accept assignment to the zombie squad, was in charge. They'd set up sort of a Hogan's Alley area where they could move between obstacles and identify zombies from civilians. Despite all of the differences, it was sometimes hard to identify the living from the dead in the heat of the moment. Though no trigger happy cop had yet shot an uninfected person, there had been a few close calls. The Hogan's Alley exercise was an attempt to forestall that eventuality.

  "Any sign of Culph?" Heron asked, pulling Henry aside. They could hardly hear with all of the shooting.

  Henry shook his head. "Haven't seen him all day."

  Heron scratched at his smooth head. His chemotherapy was coming to an end. Soon he would go for his evaluation, a formality at this point; the doctors said he was doing great. Then he'd have to start shaving again. Patting Henry on the shoulder, he turned to go. He'd taken four steps when Henry called him back.

  "I almost forgot," Henry said. "A couple of detectives from homicide were looking for you. Swanson and…Mijaro?"

  Heron nodded. He knew both of them. Thanking Henry, he left the basement and headed back up to his office. Once in his chair and breathing comfortably with a cup of coffee within reach, he picked up the phone. First he called Culph's cell phone. When there was no answer, he tried the apartment. Still no answer. Now he was worried. He was half tempted to go over there. First, he decided to call Mijaro. Pulling the number off of the computer, he dialed the phone and waited.

  "Detective Mijaro," came the answer.

  "Jamie, it's Anthony Heron. How are you?"

  Mijaro breathed. "We miss you over here, Anthony."

  "I miss the job," Heron answered with a laugh. Who the hell misses homicide? "What's up?"

  "I wish I had better news."

  Heron went cold. Even without any information, he knew it had something to do with Culph. The coincidence was too great. Culph gone for two days and homicide looking for him. He'd always considered the kid invincible.

  "Have you got a Francis Culph under your command?"

  Here it comes. "You know I do, Jamie. What happened?"

  "Is he at work?"

  "Um…no. You're looking for him?"

  "He's a suspect in a murder investigation."

  Heron shook his head sadly. "Jesus, Jamie, I thought you were going to tell me he's dead. He hasn't been to work since Saturday morning."

  "You mean for that church thing?"

  "Yeah."

  "You haven't seen him since?" Mijaro asked.

  "No."

  Her voice took on that dubious cop tone. "Are you sure?"

  "Don't treat me like that," Heron told her. "Do you think I'd lie to you? He's not answering his cell or his home phone either. I was going to go by there. What have you got?"

  "We've got a strangled woman found in her apartment last night. We checked around and got some video surveillance from outside one of the local bars. Culph was the last person seen with her."

  "Any forensic evidence?"

  "The lab technicians are working on it. We'll need a sample from Culph."

  If we ever see him again, thought Heron. "I'll let you know if I hear anything."

  "Okay, Anthony. Thanks. I wish I could say it was good talking to you."

  "Yeah," he answered. "Me, too."

  ***

  AT Sisters of Charity Hospital, the chief of emergency medicine signed off on another transfer to Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital. It was the third transfer since he'd been on shift. As he put his name on the paper, Peter Ventura, he pondered that fact that he'd rather kill them all himself. He supposed that there was some important work going on at Arthur Conroy. He expected that the doctors there would eventually find a cure or at least a viable treatment for the disease. It was that expectation that kept him signing his name. Otherwise he'd rather just release them and then show up on their doorsteps when his shift ended. To date, he'd only done that once. The transfer hadn't gone through and the mother had taken her sick son from the ER. Peter had gone there armed with a taser and several surgical instruments. After stunning the mother, he'd put the boy out of his misery. It had been a defining moment for him. Prior to that event, his experience with the zombies had always been as a victim. He'd been trapped by them in the hospital, and then trapped by his own fear of them in his apartment. When he'd come back to work, the trauma had lingered for a long time, eating away at his resolve. Acting against Jason Benford had been cathartic. Somewhere inside, he still understood that a child had died, but that hadn't been his responsibility. What was his responsibility was that anyone who might have been bitten by the resulting zombie, such as his mother, was now safe.

  He realized then that he wanted to make more people safe.

  After stunning Melissa Benford and killing her son before his time, shortly before his time, he'd expected to be arrested. He hadn't hidden his identity and he'd been unwilling to take measures that would insure Melissa Benford's silence. That far, he could not go. He wasn't built for running so he'd just gone back to his life, albeit from a very different perspective. Now, three weeks had gone by and there were no police. No questions and no arrests.

  Glancing quickly at the televisions in the waiting area, he caught a glimpse of the news conference from that past Monday morning. It was Wednesday and they were still running it. Peter was no longer worried about the police coming for him. What worried him now was that news conference, or more specifically that it had been dominated by rhetoric originating with the Zombie Rights Association. By Peter's definition, they were a club full of crackpots who needed a crusade to fill their days. Zombie rights! What a lot of nonsense. He knew what would happen, too. These people would gain political leverage
and force laws into place. Then what? When zombies were actually protected by the law, they would be unstoppable. Then they wouldn't need the law because there'd be no one left and no law at all.

  Like many of these stupid organizations, the politicians would bend to the ZRA. Afraid to turn off prospective voters, they would institute a world of regulations on the handling and testing of zombies. What was needed was a strong opponent to the ZRA. Not a political opponent. Those who stood for something always tended to gain ground over those who stood against. Politics wouldn't work. Peter had already decided that he needed to spearhead more decisive action. For a week, he'd been planning and investigating. What he'd found out had slipped beneath the noses of the police and those who were supposed to be protecting the public.

  When his shift ended, he grabbed his coat, said good day to his coworkers, and walked out the door. It was mid morning and the sun was shining high in the sky. The cold bit through his light coat but he tried to ignore it. He was working a lot of night shifts now, not normal behavior for the chief. But they'd been shorthanded ever since the panic of a couple of months before. Having been up all night, he should have been exhausted but he wasn't.

  As he strolled down the streets of Brooklyn, he came upon a fitness center call Push Ups. The name had been stuck in his head for a day or so. He had been thinking about it because he had been thinking about the woman who worked there, the one who had brought in Karl Rappaport all those weeks before. Together, they had stood off against the zombies. When he had moved in to help one of the people in trouble, she had backed him up. He remembered her as being strong, as having a family to fight for. Looking in the window, he saw her. He couldn't remember her name but he would read it off of her name tag and pretend that he remembered.

  Going inside, he looked around. The gym was small by franchise standards. There were a couple of people walking the treadmills and one body builder type working out with the weights. Steam rolled out of the back where the showers were located. Peter took in the smell of the place and wondered just how many of the dead had passed through those doors. Then he looked at the woman behind the counter. She was pouring over a notebook, a pencil in her hand. She was tap tap tapping it on the counter in an annoying rhythm. He wasn't even sure she'd noticed him.

  "Ahem," he said, stepping up to her.

  She looked up, a bit bleary eyed. There was a flash of recognition in her eyes. She remembered him but she couldn't place his face. Considering the circumstances under which they had met, he thought that weird. Of course, she may have unconsciously clouded over many of the details of that day.

  "Hello, Abby," he said to her with a smile.

  She stared at his face for a moment, then searched the rest of him for clues. There was nothing about him that might indicate that he was a doctor. He didn't wear scrubs at work and even if he had, he'd probably have changed before leaving. Even with a coat, the early December wind had a way of cutting right through scrubs as if you weren't wearing anything at all.

  Finally, she gave up. She must have thought he was a customer because she put on a customer service face and said, "Good morning."

  "You don't remember me, do you?"

  And now she was nervous. There was a lot going on inside this poor woman's head, a lot of what had been going on inside of Peter's head. She needed what he had found. Past his breakdown and the tense, fear-filled early days of his return to society, he had found peace through planning. Peace through action.

  "Sorry…" she began.

  "No sweat," he told her, extending his hand. "Peter Ventura. I'm a doctor over at Sisters of Charity."

  Halfway to shaking his hand, she halted and started just shaking. He withdrew his hand quickly, allowing her to settle back into her comfort zone.

  "It's okay," he said. "Maybe I shouldn't have come in."

  "No," she said tentatively, desperately trying to collect herself.

  "Hey, Abby!" the guy using the weights called out. "You okay?"

  She looked up at him, trying to sort through her thoughts and emotions. He must have noticed her reaction to Peter. "I'm okay," she said. "Thanks."

  "You let me know if you need me," he said back to her, eying Peter warily.

  "Sorry about that," she said to Peter, lowering her voice. The little spark of altercation seemed to settle her a bit. Peter wondered what a giant explosion would do.

  "It's okay," he said, eyeing the weight lifter. "I didn't mean to upset you."

  "I remember you now. You hit the button, the one that locked us in."

  This gave him pause. Her tone was so even that he didn't really know how to interpret what she had just said. Though there wasn't even a hint of blame, neither was there any indication that she agreed with the decision he'd made. But he remembered that day very clearly. Those times of action had been his best. In the moment, with the adrenaline coursing through his system, he'd been strong and decisive. Only afterwards had he collapsed and broken down. Only afterwards had he learned to seek the solace of that action.

  He dropped his head. "It was meant to save people."

  "And it probably did," she said. "Why are you here, Dr. Ventura?"

  "Peter. Please," he said. "I haven't told anyone this because there's no one to tell. The others that were with us in the ER have all left the city. After that day, when we were all released, I went home and locked myself in. I stayed in my apartment for a week and I won't tell you what that week was like. I only left because I finally realized that the world hadn't ended."

  Abby listened with a forced sort of detachment. What had buoyed her after the event was the realization that Sammy, her son, was going to be all right. He'd been sick that very morning and she had been worried that he was infected with the zombie plague. But his infection had been nothing more than strep throat. Ten days of antibiotics had made him well again.

  "I just…" Peter began and then turned as the door behind him opened and in walked Martin Benjamin.

  Abby's husband was a big man with thinning hair. He didn't work out, had never set foot in a gym other than to see Abby. But a high level of tension and an inability to eat large meals kept his weight down. He was in his mid-forties but showed few of the telltale signs of his years. Trained as a computer network technician, he'd seen some good times during the economic boom of the 1990's and even early in the twenty first century. With the economic collapse, however, he'd lost his job and his livelihood. Now he was part of Best Buy's staff and feeling miserable about it. Underneath his long winter coat, the bright blue of his shirt was just barely visible. He wore the khaki pants that all of the employees wore.

  "Hello, love," he said to Abby.

  Bewildered at his appearance, she came around the counter and embraced him. Peter's appearance had put her ill at ease and seeing Martin brought back some stability to her psyche. She squeezed him hard and reached up to give him a kiss on the cheek. When she pulled away, he was smiling.

  "It's nice to be appreciated," he said. "Who’s the bloke?"

  Peter pushed out a hand. "Peter Ventura."

  Martin took it. "You a regular here?"

  "No. I actually came by to see Abby. You must be her husband."

  "That's right. Martin Benjamin." He was looking at Peter queerly and then suddenly brightened. "I remember you. You were one of the docs over at that hospital a few months back."

  "That's right," Peter said, pleased that Martin had remembered even if Abby hadn't.

  "There's not going to be a reunion, is there?" Martin was making light of the situation but not really. He knew how badly it had affected Abby. Even his own troubles had faded into obscurity in light of her resulting frailty. He tried not to complain too much about his job and helped out more with Sammy. Whenever they needed to borrow money from her parents, he took it with teeth clenched but no comment. It was difficult. All of those things were difficult for a man like Martin. But it would be too much to bear if he alienated and lost Abby.