“This goes beyond politics, though,” the biologist quickly added. “No political party has been able to keep our water clean. And now there’s this new stuff in it . . . and no, I’m not avoiding a ‘science term’ because you two don’t have PhDs. I’m calling it ‘stuff’ because I don’t know what the fuck it is. Nobody does. I mean . . . I know it’s a suspended solid. I know that sometimes it acts like mercury and sometimes it acts like ammonia and sometimes it acts like arsenic. But I’ve seen it do things. Things that made me get my eyes checked, and then my head examined. Things that made me think a graduate student was playing a practical joke on me by sabotaging a brand-new electron microscope display. This stuff in our water . . . what it does . . . you won’t even believe me.”
Drextel took a step forward and raised his hand to interject.
“All due respect, Professor . . . after what we’ve seen in the past twenty-four hours, I’d say we’re liable to believe quite a lot.”
Richard Niel nodded. For a moment, he looked straight ahead, staring at nothing. His eyes wandered randomly. He was remembering.
Nolan had seen this look before, usually on the faces of witnesses asked to recall the details of a horrible crime. Whatever was coming next, Nolan realized it would be bad.
“It reanimates dead tissue,” the biologist finally said. “Not often. Not reliably. But sometimes. Now that in itself is not as earth-shattering as you’d think. Throw some fresh-skinned frogs’ legs into salt, and you’ll see something much more dramatic. A lot of our bodies are just chemical reactions. Nerve impulses. You connect a corpse to an electric wire, and it’ll damn-sure dance for a while. But this stuff. This is operating on a whole other level. A cellular one.”
“And it’s behind the zombies?” Nolan asked.
The biologist continued to stare straight ahead. He stroked his beard, trying to think.
“It’s possible,” the biologist said. “What I’ve observed has just been in the lab. I’ve seen human skin cells twitch—cells that were in a freezer for twenty years. I’ve seen a human heart beat once—like an engine unsuccessfully trying to turn over—and then fall silent. I’ve watched isolated cardiac muscle expand and contract, and I didn’t know why. But this . . . what you’re saying . . . this is a whole new ballgame.”
The biologist wiped his brow.
“Sometimes chemicals can slowly build up in waterways, and you only see evidence way off in the outliers—a cancer cluster here or there—until one day, boom! It reaches a critical mass. Overnight evidence is everywhere, and you can’t believe you didn’t see it before.”
“Or see it walking around and eating people,” Drextel added.
The biologist nodded seriously.
“So anyway . . . you can use my ATV, if you think it will help you find those kids. I’ll be okay where I am. I’ve got a gun inside the hut, and some camping supplies.”
“Thank you,” Nolan said.
“But if you two are somehow bullshitting me, I will hunt you down and cut off your balls,” he added. “Got it? Don’t think I won’t, just because I’m a scientist.”
“Yeah, okay,” Nolan said. “Got it.”
A few minutes later, Nolan and Drextel were cruising across the forest floor on a bright-blue Yamaha ATV. The biologist had pointed them in the direction of the nearest highway, but for the moment they both wanted to stay inside the trees. Something told both of them that Steven and Kesha—and possibly Madison Burleson—were still to be found within these leafy folds.
As he gripped the ATV’s handles and steered around tree trunks and fallen logs, Nolan found it tempting to allow his mind to wander away from where he was. The woods had an intoxicatingly alien smell, so different from the city parks he was used to. Not only were there virtually no other humans around, there were no signs of humans. No noise. No litter. No smoke or exhaust, except from his own ATV. In this arboreal strangeness, he felt disconnected from reality.
The shadows drew long and Nolan stopped to look at the sky. Hard as it was to believe, the sun was starting to set. It had been twenty-four hours—more or less—since the outbreak had begun. Twenty-four hours, and Nolan knew almost as little as he did when he’d first seen that mess of bone and sinew scrabbling against Kesha Washington’s backpack in the cave. Twenty-four hours felt like a long time not to learn anything new. A long time to wonder.
Where was the government? Where was the Army? Where was the goddamn cell service and electricity?
And where was the governor’s daughter?
In his ten years of service to the department and the governor, this was probably Nolan’s only categorical failure. No one would blame him, of course. These were the most extenuating circumstances he could envision. Even so, it gnawed at the back of his brain. He had not found the governor’s daughter. He still did not know if she was even alive.
In the dying light, it was harder to look for clues—for footprints or other signs that the teenagers might have passed this way. Yet something in his gut told Nolan not to pack it up and head back to Indy quite yet.
Once, it seemed to Nolan that he heard gunshots in the distance, and he stopped and turned off the vehicle to listen. He and Drextel cupped their ears and surveyed the shady trees around them, but heard nothing more.
“I’d hate to run into somebody who wasn’t friendly,” Drextel said. “Too easy for them to hear us coming in this.”
Nolan agreed, increasingly aware that they were potentially the hunted as well as the hunters. The ATV was loud, and also left them sitting exposed.
Soon, the trees around them became noticeably smaller. They were more like saplings, and could be crushed easily under the ATV’s powerful tires. Nolan understood that they had probably reached the western edge of the woods.
Ahead of them, the tiny trees fell away entirely. Nolan and Drextel could see a road and fields of waving cornstalks beyond. Nolan looked back once at Drextel, whose expression indicated that he had no better idea.
Nolan piloted them out of the trees. The two men found themselves staring at a small cultivated clearing between the woods and the highway. It was a little campsite, with three picnic tables and two filthy grills. The grass had been mown—not recently, but at one point.
Two of the picnic tables were empty, but atop the third were the remains of a human being. Legs, a glistening ribcage, and a skeletonized face were all visible in the dying light. Blood had poured through the slats of the table, and now soaked into the ground beneath. Around the table hunkered five shadowy figures—zombies—themselves in various states of dismemberment and decay. Two of them looked at Nolan as he parked the ATV some thirty yards away. The other three remained focused on the feast spread out before them.
“What the hell is this?” Drextel asked, awkwardly dismounting behind Nolan. He raised Sheree Hipwell’s .22, just in case the assembled undead should make a charge.
Nolan also got off of the ATV and stretched his legs. He took a long look at the cornfield beyond, and only then surveyed the grisly scene upon the picnic table. Something in his policeman’s instincts told him that there was more to this than met the eye.
“Five zombies and a dead guy,” Nolan said. “Or gal. But the way the body is sitting there on that picnic table. The zombies didn’t do that. It’s like it’s been laid out on purpose.”
“Like for . . . a picnic?” Drextel asked.
Nolan nodded yes.
The two zombies that had noticed the newcomers began to take a few steps toward the ATV.
“You want me to take these guys out?” Drextel asked.
Nolan scanned the cornfields once more. The stalks whispered in the late summer wind. Insects buzzed and flitted.
“I wouldn’t like to make our presence known more than we need to,” Nolan said.
Drextel lowered the weapon.
“Okay,” Drextel said with a shrug. “But they’re coming over now. You see that.”
“Yes. I also think we can easily outrun them.”
Drextel looked at the ATV and nodded, but Nolan had been thinking of running on foot. The hand of the gas gauge on the Yamaha was just above the “E.”
As Nolan watched the waving corn and thought about what to do next, he heard a strange sound in the distance. A low metallic burbling, Nolan first imagined it might be gunshots or cannons. Then the sound moved closer and became more distinct. Motorcycle engines. Lots and lots of motorcycle engines. A convoy. A gang.
“Motorcycles?” Drextel asked, cupping an ear.
“Yeah,” Nolan said. “A bunch, too. Coming up fast.”
“What do you want to do?” Drextel asked.
Nolan hesitated, something he rarely did. The cornstalks and trees affected the noise in strange ways. The engines seemed to go from distant to just-behind-the-next-row-of-corn and back again. It was hard to tell exactly from what direction they were approaching.
Then, all at once, the bikers were there.
A hard-looking bunch, they appeared suddenly at the end of the gravel road. They wore black jackets full of patches and brain-bucket helmets with chinstraps. Most of the men had facial hair. They all carried weapons. One had a shotgun strapped over his shoulder like it was a backpack. Perhaps twenty-five in all, they rode slowly, surveying the sides of the road as they went. It was clear they were looking for something. Or someone.
Nolan quickly realized there was no time left to hide.
“I’d lower that rifle!” he shouted to Drextel over the roar of the engines. He made a hand-lowering motion. Drextel eventually got the idea.
Nolan stood up straight as the bikers approached. There were more than a few bike gangs in Indianapolis. In his time working narcotics, Nolan had crossed paths with most of them. Some were criminal assholes, sure, but some could surprise you and be downright friendly. Nolan had a feeling that his own celebrity status likely colored the positive reactions he often got. Bikers who remembered his time playing ball often wanted to be “down” with him. Get their picture taken and such. (Once, off the clock, Nolan had accepted an invitation to follow a group back to their clubhouse for drinks. Aside from signing a basketball and doing several rounds of shots, Nolan had almost no remaining memories of that evening.)
This gang, however, he did not recognize. Nolan looked in vain for a familiar patch or insignia.
The bikers slowed as the feasting zombies came into view. Then they slowed more when they saw Nolan and Drextel. A few brandished their guns. Others simply telegraphed icy stares from above their wild mustaches.
The lead biker—a huge, round man with fat fingers full of rings—raised a hand and pulled to a stop in front of Nolan. The bikers behind him followed suit. For a moment, they did not turn off their bikes. The noise was deafening. (From the corner of his eye, Nolan saw that Drextel had dropped his rifle entirely and had put his fingers in his ears.) The bikers appeared to be a hard bunch, but Nolan saw recognition on more than a few faces as they looked him over. Eventually, the lead biker killed his engine and stepped off his hog. The others copied him.
The round leader walked past Nolan as if he weren’t there. He examined the remains of the corpse on the picnic table, along with the attendant zombies. Then, after a few moments, he went back to Nolan.
“What part did you all have in this?” the biker asked, gesturing to the table.
“We just got here,” Nolan said, indicating the ATV. “We’re looking for some teenage kids who got lost.”
“Yeah, you are,” the biker said, as if he did not quite believe it. “That was our man, on the table. He got took last night.”
“Do you know who did it?” Nolan asked.
The biker looked up into Nolan’s face and grinned.
“We might have some idea,” the biker answered.
Another member of the bike gang approached. He had a thick grey beard and an almost unbelievably large forehead.
“I know you,” Forehead said to Nolan. “The college boy. The one who got drunk and crashed his car and killed a guy.”
Nolan understood that this hectoring was a test. It was also a show of power. In days like these, the checks and balances that might have kept a bunch of bikers from acting like a real gang were long gone. They knew it too. A whiskered geezer with an enormous brow could be the most powerful man on the scene if he was part of an armed group.
“That’s what they tell me,” Nolan replied evenly. “Some people, anyway.”
Forehead smiled confidently.
Someone fired a handgun. Then another. Nolan turned and saw dismounted bikers pointing their guns at the zombies who surrounded the picnic table. They opened up on the zombies like it was target practice. Nolan didn’t think they were shooting to kill. (They had to know by now that a headshot was required.) They were shooting for the hell of it. They made the zombies twist and dance and, eventually, fall under a hail of bullets. The bikers continued to shoot the zombies even as they writhed on the ground. One biker took a fireman’s axe off the back of his bike and descended on the prone undead with a murderous fury. It seemed cathartic. These men—and a few women, too—had tensions that needed releasing.
“Where you all coming from?” Nolan asked.
“We’re headed north,” the round leader said, not really answering the question. “You should be too, if you’ve got any sense, basketball man.”
“Oh, really?” Nolan said.
The biker gestured to the carnage over at the picnic table.
“Them things. They’s joining into big groups. The whole damn south of the state is lousy with ’em. Seen whole fields full. Eat up small towns all at once.”
“Where are you headed, north?” Nolan asked.
The biker did not immediately respond. Forehead crept over and whispered into his ear. The bikers looked at one another and smiled. Then they looked back up at Nolan.
“Headed up to Indy,” said the leader of the biker gang.
“Oh yeah?” said Nolan.
“Yeah,” the biker said. “And guess what?”
“What?” Nolan asked warily.
“You’re coming with us.”
21
Kesha, Steven, Madison, Sara, and Tara emerged from the twilit woods just as the sun was beginning to disappear from the horizon. Darkness was only minutes away, but, for the moment, the sunset lit up the western half of the sky like a brilliant trail of neon lava. The way before them opened onto cornfields with a small white farmhouse just beyond. The house did not appear inhabited.
The teenagers paused for a moment, considering what to do.
“You want to just go up and ring the doorbell?” Kesha asked.
Madison did not immediately answer. Sara and Tara exchanged a look of grave concern.
“I should go,” Steven volunteered.
“What?” Kesha asked. “Just because you’re a boy?”
He shook his head.
“There’s no nice way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it,” Steven answered. “I’m the only one here who doesn’t sound like a city slicker.”
Kesha smiled. The rest of the girls did not disagree.
“But maybe you should keep that hunting rifle handy,” Steven added. “Kind of cover me, yeah?”
Tara, who was holding the weapon, nodded seriously.
With the girls waiting at the edge of the woods, Steven carefully approached the farmhouse and knocked on the front door. There was no response. The house stayed dark.
Steven tried the handle and found that the door opened easily. Kesha watched as he called “Hello!” Nobody answered. Steven disappeared into the house, then reappeared moments later. He motioned for the girls to join him.
With considerable effort, they helped Madison cross the field and make her way to the farmhouse door.
“Nobody inside,” Steven announced. “The fridge is full, though. Might as well have at it. Everything inside is gonna go bad anyway.”
This was what they wanted to hear.
The girls unceremoniously deposited Ma
dison in Steven’s arms, then made a mad dash for the kitchen.
“Oof,” Madison said as the handoff was made.
“Almost there,” Steven said to her. “I’ll help you the rest of the way.”
Tara and Sara raided the simple but fully stocked fridge. Kesha made for a jar of cookies next to the kitchen sink.
“Omigod,” said Sara, drinking straight from a container of lukewarm orange juice. “This tastes so good. I’m so starving. I could eat just a raw egg, without cooking it.”
“I so know what you mean,” echoed Tara. “I’m like an animal right now.”
“Totally,” Sara agreed.
Kesha was on her fourth butter cookie by the time Steven and Madison loped into the room. Kesha held out the jar. Both readily accepted.
The inside of the house was ghostly and dark. It had a lived-in smell—not bad, necessarily, but as if many, many people had recently called it home. The light from the sunset made the windows on the west side glisten and gleam.
The girls settled in to eat, but after just a few cookies, Steven left to explore the second floor. After a few minutes, he returned with two flashlights and a prescription bottle. He tossed a light to Kesha, and the bottle to Madison.
“Painkillers,” he said to her. “Should probably start with just one.”
“Okay,” Madison said, holding it up to read the label.
“I think I saw a shed on the other side of the house,” Steven said. “I’m going to go have a look.”
“I’ll come, too,” Kesha said. She pocketed a few more cookies and followed him outside.
Sure enough, on the other side of the farmhouse was a tiny barn with a gambrel roof. It had a latch on the front with a padlock, but it had not been engaged and simply dangled there. Steven pulled the latch and pried the door open. Inside was some hay, garden tools (mostly rakes), spiders and spider webs, and a rusted, puke-orange 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air. The car took up all of Steven and Kesha’s attention. It was almost comically long, and had raised fins just above the taillights. It was so dusty and encrusted with insects that it looked like a part of the barn itself.
Zombie, Indiana Page 21