Zombie, Indiana

by Scott Kenemore

  Van Zanten crossed Michigan Street. Ahead of him loomed the Indiana War Memorial, an enormous marble temple to the victors of the First World War. It seemed to van Zanten that figures cavorted in the shadows of the great building, yet always scuttled out of sight before he could make sense of what he was seeing. This did not produce any sensation other than sheer alarm. Van Zanten could now clearly see the Green Zone. A military personnel carrier and a set of IMPD squad cars had been parked to cordon off Meridian Street near the circle. Some of the cars even appeared to have live police inside of them. Van Zanten was almost there.

  Then the tragedy.

  Nothing less than a sewer grate at the Dutchman’s feet had been his undoing. Only a block from the beckoning police officers at the cordon, van Zanten had failed entirely to notice the sewer opening set into the curb. From it, a long arm wearing a tattered green jacket had slowly extended. From its sleeve further projected a blue-green hand with long, sharp nails. As van Zanten strode past, the hand reached out and gripped his ankle. More confused than startled, van Zanten looked down in time to see the apparently disembodied arm yank on his leg. The tall Dutchman’s feet went out from under him and he fell hard against the concrete. A moment later, the hand was crawling up past his knee like an excited lecher’s, grasping for his groin and whatever lay beyond. Van Zanten saw the horrid, rotting hand and tried to roll away. As he did, he risked a quick glance into the sewer opening. Inside was a horrible thing, like half a human face with eyes on stalks. Rot and sewer water had morphed the zombie’s face into a fleshy parody of human features. Muscle and bone had mostly washed away, but somehow the glistening, perfect eyes had remained. They projected tenuously on lengths of sinew just above a pair of obscene openings that might once have been a nose and throat. Though the thing no longer had a lower jaw with which to masticate, something in it still bespoke the hunger to put a delicious young Dutchman inside of it.

  Before van Zanten could roll away, the thing pulled his leg inside the sewer opening. Van Zanten felt something pierce his flesh. Was it a fingernail? A tooth? Whatever remained of the zombie’s jaw? Or was it something else entirely—some bone or cartilage not designed by evolution to pierce or impale, but now repurposed to serve that function?

  Whatever it was, it hurt. A lot.

  Van Zanten cried out and tugged his leg free. In doing so, he severed most of his pants and tore a furrow of skin from the side of his leg. Blood began to spill from the long gash almost immediately. The pain was incredible. It did not quite seem real. Van Zanten scrambled to his feet. The troops at the entrance to the Green Zone looked at one another. Perhaps, thought van Zanten, they had not grasped the enormity of what was transpiring.

  Van Zanten scuttled toward the Green Zone cordon and the confused guards, largely unaware of the trail of blood he left behind him. He ran on adrenaline and fury. Fury at his own inattention, and fury at the guards who had not reacted. Some part of van Zanten knew that these military reservists could not, practically speaking, have done a thing to help him. Even if a guardsman had had a sniper rifle loaded and aimed, no one could have gotten a shot at this zombie, huddled like a hermit crab in a sewery shell.

  Van Zanten neared the edge of the Green Zone cordon, and one of the guards set down his rifle and came forward to help. Van Zanten began to feel very, very weak. It became hard to think, as though his mind had become clouded. Yet it seemed impossible that a wound to his leg—however deep—might cause this sudden a retardation of his faculties. Van Zanten’s gait slowed to little more than a crawl. Before long, the solider was nearly unable to move him.

  “I’m Ellard van Zanten,” he managed, as the guard motioned for other sentries to come and assist. “I work for Governor Burleson. I was . . . I was . . .”

  And van Zanten collapsed quite completely into the arms of the soldier.

  ***

  Governor Burleson was catnapping in his leather chair inside the war room when three National Guard soldiers dragged in his lanky assistant director of communications.

  “This one said he was with you?” one of the soldiers said as van Zanten was deposited into a nearby office chair.

  The governor nodded, allowing that this was so.

  Almost immediately, van Zanten began bleeding onto the floor below him. There was also blood coming out of his nose and mouth.

  “Jesus!” said Huggins, still both physically and spiritually at the governor’s right hand. “Why didn’t you take him to a medic?”

  The chief of staff began to move laptops and papers away from the parts of the table where van Zanten’s blood might smudge them.

  “He said he was with the governor,” the solider replied. “The ID in his pocket backed that up.”

  “Go and get a medic,” cried Huggins. “Now.”

  The three soldiers departed. As if on cue, van Zanten lifted his head slightly and began talking.

  “I’m going to die here,” the Dutchman moaned.

  Both Huggins and the governor noted that van Zanten had placed his emphasis on the wrong word.

  “Now, now,” Huggins assured him. “We’ve sent for the medic. You’re going to be fine. You’re a big strong man. What happened? It looks like you just cut your leg. Maybe hurt your nose?”

  “Did you get the video to the TV networks?” the governor wanted to know.

  Van Zanten nodded. His head lolled back and stayed back. He was looking up at the ceiling.

  “One of them,” van Zanten croaked. “I got it to one of them.”

  The governor cast a sideways expression at Huggins to say that this was better than nothing.

  “I’m dying,” van Zanten continued. “I’m dying here. My parents don’t even know where this is.”

  “We . . .” Huggins began awkwardly. “We can get in touch with your parents if anything happens. When the phones come back on.”

  “They don’t even know Indiana,” van Zanten lamented. (His eyes were now crossed, and the pool of blood beneath him was growing.) “They know California. Movies. Celebrities. They know Michigan for cars. They know New York for New York City. They know that Texas has cowboys and oil. But people in Holland don’t know Indiana. I try to tell them . . . I try to explain to my parents who we are and what we are doing here. I try to tell them what the project is. They are always confused. They always mix us up with Ohio or Iowa or Wisconsin. No, I tell them. No. It’s Indiana. Indiana . . .”

  Huggins wondered if he should stop the young man from speaking; it was now beyond any doubt that van Zanten was legitimately on his way out. Yet no sooner did Huggins open his mouth to do this, than van Zanten went limp and collapsed forward in his chair. His head struck the conference table with an alarmingly powerful bonk. Then all was silent.

  Huggins looked to the governor, who motioned for some nearby administrative personnel to remove this body from his headquarters.

  As they were dragging van Zanten out, Huggins took aside a security guard and told him to put a bullet in van Zanten’s brain, just as insurance. The guard nodded and readied his gun.

  14

  James Nolan and Drextel Washington stood next to one another and looked into what remained of the carnival.

  “Was it like this when you left it?” Drextel asked softly.

  Nolan shook his head.

  Fully half of the carnival attractions had been tipped over. Several had been set on fire. Many of the smaller trailers that served as booths for food vendors were missing entirely (doubtless lost to an enterprising looter driving something big enough to tow). There were fresh bullet holes in the trailers that remained. There was a corpse in the field nearby, with honest-to-God arrows sticking up out of its back. The only movement came from Furbus who sprang between the shadows of the creaking carnival rides.

  Nolan produced his Ruger and motioned for Drextel to bring his shotgun to bear.

  “What’s happening?” Drextel whispered as he followed Nolan. “Where’s Kesha?”

  “I don’t know,” No
lan said gruffly. “We’re going to find out.”

  They crept into the fairgrounds. Nothing moved except for the cat in the grass. Still, Nolan had the feeling they were being watched. This feeling was not usually wrong.

  Suddenly, a weak voice cried: “Here! Over here!”

  Nolan cautiously rounded the side of a large white residential trailer and saw, on the ground quite near him, Sheree Hipwell supine in the grass. Her .22 rifle was just beyond her reach. She had a pair of bullet wounds in her side, and another in her arm. The ground beneath her was stained dark with her own blood.

  “I could hear you two a damn mile away,” she said.

  Nolan smiled. Then frowned. It was clear the woman did not have long to live.

  “What happened?” Nolan asked. “Where’s Kesha? Where’s Steven?”

  Sheree looked straight ahead and blinked several times, as if summoning the will to re-live it.

  “Bunch of criminals came, wanting to kill us and take whatever they could,” Sheree said. “Thank God Steven and Kesha were off somewhere moving cars. I think they had the sense to stay away.”

  “What happened to Kesha?” Drextel asked. “She’s my daughter.”

  “They were moving cars out in the fields,” Sheree reiterated. “Over there.”

  With what was clearly considerable effort, Sheree bent her arm and pointed out to the far edge of the valley.

  “Can I . . .” Nolan began. He was going to ask if he could do anything, but it was painfully obvious that there was nothing he could do, other than perhaps make the poor woman comfortable. There were no emergency services to contact, and no phones with which to make the call.

  “I could tell something was going to happen on this trip,” Sheree said. “I knew it was going to be bad. Just didn’t know how bad. I didn’t want to scare Steven, so I sort of didn’t give him the full version. When those dead men walked into the carnival last night, I thought, this is it. This is how bad it’s going to get. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

  Sheree coughed. Her throat rattled and her chest heaved. It was apparent to all—including her—that these were to be her final moments.

  “What should—?” Nolan tried again.

  “You should find Steven,” Sheree said. “Find Kesha, too, while you’re at it. They’re onto something, those two. I can tell. Something big. And it concerns you too, James Nolan. It concerns everybody in this whole entire state.”

  “What?” Nolan said.

  “The girl you’re trying to find,” Sheree said. “Not Kesha. The daughter of the governor . . . that girl. It’s very important that you find her, James. It’s important that she gets back to her dad. It’s important to thousands and thousands of people. Do you understand?”

  “Not really,” Nolan said.

  Sheree said nothing else.

  It took them both a few moments to realize that she was gone.

  Nolan placed Sheree’s body on the bed inside her ransacked trailer and shut the door. Then he handed Sheree’s .22 rifle and some ammunition to Drextel.

  “This is probably better than your shotgun,” Nolan said, “which you told me might not even work.”

  “And this old rifle works?” asked Drextel, accepting the gun.

  “It’s been recently fired,” said Nolan. “So yeah, it works.”

  The two men returned to the parking lot.

  “I think we go in that direction,” Nolan said, nodding toward the far lip of the valley where Sheree had gestured. “And I think it might be more sensible to take one car. I have a feeling gas is going to be at a premium for the foreseeable future.”

  “A lot of the stations back in Indy ran dry just a few hours after the chaos started,” Drextel said. “But wait . . . I can’t just leave my car out here, can I?”

  Nolan raised an eyebrow to indicate that perhaps Drextel had missed a crucial point.

  “Are you really attached to that old clunker?” Nolan said, gesturing to Drextel’s ride.

  Nolan nodded at the rows of empty automobiles stacked next to them in the lot, keys in their ignitions.

  Drextel relented, and together they took Nolan’s Jeep westward across the valley floor and up over the crest of the hill beyond. After only a few minutes of exploring, they discovered a bright red Hummer parked against the edge of a forested area. The doors had been left open.

  “Well, hell,” Drextel quipped. “If we’re trading up, let’s trade for that.”

  They piloted their Jeep over to the tree line and got out. Nolan explored the driver’s side of the Hummer, yet found very little. Drextel took the passenger’s side. It took him a few seconds of inspection to ominously intone, “Oh fuck . . .”

  “What?” Nolan said.

  Drextel reached to the floorboard of the H2 and came back clutching a gym bag smeared with blood.

  He handed it to Nolan.

  “That’s from Kesha’s school,” Drextel said.

  Nolan turned it over in his hands for a long time. Then he held it very still.

  “This blood isn’t either of theirs,” Nolan said. “It’s maybe twelve hours old.”

  Nolan surveyed the Hummer and its exterior. On a whim, he popped the hood and put his hand on the engine. It was still hot.

  Next he took a long hard look into the woods.

  “It’s kind of hard to see,” Nolan said to Drextel, “but somebody ran into those woods right there, and fast. Look at the undergrowth right at the edge.”

  “Are you saying it was them?” Drextel asked.

  “I think so.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We go after them,” Nolan answered.

  “On foot?”

  “On foot.”

  The men walked slowly. The trail of ripped foliage and muddy footprints was not hard to follow, at least not at first. Drextel intermittently cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed out a few loud cries of “Kesha!” They were not returned.

  Nolan, a bit concerned by this, chose to emphasize the bright side.

  “We have every reason to think they’re still alive,” he said as they carefully navigated a row of barbed boxthorn. “They didn’t try anything stupid back there in the valley. I’m guessing that was their Hummer. They drove it to the woods and ran away, which was the right move.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re safe,” Drextel said.

  “Well . . . I mean . . . it’s the woods, I guess,” Nolan said. “There could be cougars, but you hardly see those anymore. Maybe the odd coyote.”

  “I don’t know that boy Kesha’s with,” Drextel said.

  “I met him,” Nolan replied. “Seems like a good kid.”

  “Maybe for you,” Drextel said. “Kesha was just learning how to get along at her new school. The last year has been hard for her, but she’s done it. She’s starting to fit in with those upper-crust people. She also knows the south side of town, where she was raised. Those are her two ecosystems. But this? I’m worried about her. She’s only fifteen.”

  “I think there are actually advantages to this terrain,” Nolan said. “It’s safer than a city, anyway. The zombies pop up and you’ve got plenty of directions to go in. Plenty of things to climb.”

  “I’m worried about the people,” Drextel said. “This part of the state is tough. Mean. You go more than a mile off the beaten path, you get some rough characters.”

  Nolan thought about the old couple he and Kesha had met the night before. She had seemed to handle herself just fine.

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as all that,” Nolan said. “I grew up in a place like this.”

  “Humph,” Drextel said. “You know about Larry Bird, right? I’m guessing you do. I recognize you, by the way. I know who you are, Mister Basketball.”

  “I get more comparisons to Damon Bailey, actually,” Nolan said. “But yeah, I know who Larry Bird is. Of course I do. I watched him when I was a kid.”

  “Larry’s from this part of the state,” Drextel said ominously.

 
Nolan waited for more information.

  “Soooo?”

  “So?” Drextel returned. “So if you grew up watching him, then you know how that boy played! I can’t remember a meaner, more tight-lipped, tougher son of a bitch in the NBA. That’s a guy who started more fights than people can count, all elbows and fists and teeth when he could get away with it. That’s a guy who came home in the off-season and split wood and did farm work . . . for fun. For fun! Can you ever remember Larry Bird smiling? Think about that for a second, big man.”

  Nolan did.

  “I can actually . . . but I still take your point,” Nolan said. “The times I can remember him smiling were pretty few and far between. And usually it was because a bad thing had happened to somebody on the other team.”

  Drextel nodded.

  “And you remember about how much he loved Boston, the city he played for?” Drextel said.

  “How much he . . .” Nolan said, trying to think.

  “You don’t remember that, do you?” Drextel elaborated. “You don’t remember because all he ever talked about was French Lick. Southern Indiana. This was his kind of place. The kind of place where quiet, mean, violent sons of bitches fit right the fuck in.”

  “I’m guessing you were more of a Magic Johnson guy back in the ’80s?” Nolan said.

  “Joke all you like,” Drextel told him. “You’re a tall-ass white boy everybody loves. Kesha is a fifteen-year-old black girl from the south side of the city, who doesn’t know a damn thing about this part of the state. Her only exposure to white people comes from the rich ones she goes to class with at her private school. And something tells me they’re not around here right now.”

  Nolan decided just to nod.

  “Like I said,” Drextel continued, “I’m not worried about the zombies . . . this here is Larry Bird country. That’s what’s got me scared.”

  Moments later, a single gunshot echoed from the distant hills.

  Nolan and Drextel looked at one another, and headed deeper into the trees.

  15

  Kesha stayed a few paces behind Steven as they continued their flight through the woods. The ground beneath them had inclined and declined several times, so that now Kesha reckoned they were maybe in another valley entirely. The air smelled like deep woods, that powerful, raw chlorophyll scent you just didn’t get in the forest preserves up in Indianapolis. Buzzing insects popped up in clusters that Kesha did her best to shoo away. Now and then they encountered a tiny creek with small fish you could see in the shallow water. Kesha’s shoes were caked in mud.