He paused just a moment, looking at his hands. I now noticed they were mottled, like with liver spots on old people, but these were light-gray patches. I still wasn't sure why the people here longed for a smelly messiah with weird eczema, but I was eager to find out.
Milton continued, more calmly again. "Anyway, I was with all these people here, and they seemed to need me to lead them, guide them, help them. And I didn't have a clue what to do for them. So I wanted to read books, maybe get some ideas." He gestured to the shelves. "Most everything here was about science, or nineteenth century local history. That's not what I needed, though a few books on psychology were useful, as were some on the hardships faced by settlers here, and on the wisdom of the Native Americans.
"Fortunately, the traveling exhibition downstairs was on Ancient Rome, so they had a few books on history, literature, politics, philosophy, mythology, religion: that's what I needed.
"And one time when Jack went out foraging for food, I begged him to take me along, so I could get more books. I didn't want to risk anyone else hunting around for books, so I would do it myself, but I had to have more books. Jack looked at me like I was crazy, but even he thinks I have some gift, so he humored me. I needed books on what makes people tick, on what they value, on how they get along with each other. So I read, and I learned. And with Jack's help, we built up the community."
The story was more preposterous than I ever could've imagined. If the guy could perform telekinesis or levitate, it would've made more sense to me. If he was just some glib, charismatic, fast talker who had conned everyone, that would really make sense. I'd hate him for it, but it would make sense at least. But a reluctant messiah who educated himself with books looted from the local Barnes and Noble—it really seemed comical.
Still, I had to admit that, unlike all the religious and political hucksters who had run a con before the dead rose, at least Milton had never taken any money from anyone; he hadn't gotten some revelation that he should be surrounded by a harem and fed grapes, and he seemed quite eager to debunk himself.
So, again, if it worked for this community that I wanted to be a part of, it seemed silly to look down on or ridicule them. But I did want a little more proof of profundity before I embarked on an initiation rite that involved running around, unarmed, among the hungry dead, looking for Air Wicks and silk flowers, or whatever it was I was going to be doing.
"What, exactly, did you learn?" I asked, and it came out a little more accusatorily than intended.
"Jonah, I learned about human nature, which I have to say, I had never once considered before coming here. I don't think many people do. Reading all those wonderful books, I am sure you thought about it before, didn't you?"
He was so simple that it was wonderfully disarming. I still didn't quite understand what the people here thought was so miraculous about him, but I did see how they could come to him with their problems and respect his answers. It was impossible to imagine him being arrogant or selfish or forcing his opinion on someone.
"Yes, I did," I replied. "I'm not sure I came to any conclusions, though."
He laughed for the first time, and it was even more disarming than his little, ingenuous questions. "Good! I couldn't very well talk to you if you had, because I know I don't have answers, only questions, and you'd be quite bored with how stupid I must seem. But if you have questions, too, then maybe we can ask some together. Or does Jack have some eminently practical, necessary thing for you to do? Dig a ditch or build a wall or kill something? He loves that kind of thing so much, it's funny."
"No, no, he didn't mention anything."
"Wonderful!" He leaned back and looked off dreamily again, his own thousand yard stare. I could see that Milton was pretty much all thousand yard stares, and it was nice to see someone enjoying them for a change.
* * * * *
"I think the thing that surprised and interested me the most was how so many people agree that people's souls have several parts. They differ on what to call them, or how many there are, but they agree that there are parts. Had you always known that there were several parts? I found it so amazing!"
Again, his innocence was quite captivating, and also, as Jack had said, energizing, either to someone who hadn't considered the things he was talking about, or to someone like me, who had thought of them too much, in the desiccated, constipated way that academics or experts do. "Well, Milton, I don't think I had been raised to believe that, but I do remember learning it in college, and I remember it was exciting to me then."
"Yes, that's what I mean! What a marvelous life you had, to learn such an important thing so young. It made it so much easier for me to see how people would interact here, or what they would need. Look at Jack: can you think of someone who's more the embodiment of the rational part of the soul? All his plans and schemes and calculations!"
I smiled. "Yes, I think that's his part of the soul, Milton."
"So I know when I talk to Jack, it has to be all logic and business. But he knows now that sometimes he leaves people's emotions out of his calculations, and now we work much better together. For instance, did he tell you about burying the bodies?"
"Yes, he said you did that for the people here, but not for those you killed."
"Yes, but even before I got here, people had argued with him about what to do with the bodies. He wanted to dump them all over the back wall and be done with it. He said we couldn't afford the calories we'd spend digging holes for them, and we didn't have the fuel to burn them. He would compromise, grudgingly, but once I could understand what was going on, how he was looking at it differently, it made more sense to me, and we could discuss it."
He paused just a moment, and I could guess he was switching gears. "And while we're discussing that—tell me, if it's all right, why did you go looking for your family?"
That question took me by surprise again. I was trying to tie it in with his observations on human nature, but then I thought that I should just answer it as straightforwardly as possible. "Because I loved them and missed them?"
"Yes, I know, but I wonder if there was something more going on. You don't think, for example, that you loved them more than all the thousands of people who didn't go looking for their loved ones, who just assumed, once it all started, that they were dead and there was no point?"
"No, no, I don't remember ever thinking that I loved them more than other people loved their families."
"And I believe you were right not to think that. And please don't think I mean that you didn't love them, but it just seems to me that it also has to do with your will being the predominant part of your soul. Once you made a decision, a commitment, then the logic or the emotion involved were really beside the point. You went alone across hundreds of miles with literally millions of walking corpses all around, because you thought it was your responsibility. It was quite remarkable, too. I don't think Jack could've done it, even with all his training. Or Tanya—I don't think she could carry on like that for so long, though think of how much explosive power she has at any given moment. You've seen her fight?"
"Yes."
"It's amazing, isn't it? And a little frightening, to have so much rage. If you were being attacked, hand to hand, who would you want fighting alongside you?"
"Tanya—pure, raw emotion."
"Exactly. Each part has its uses, has a place to fit, and has its own people devoted especially to it."
"And which one is the most important?"
His eyes really sparkled, and he smiled. "Oh, I am so glad you came here! No one here would think to ask me that! They just let me ramble on, and they're so convinced I've been touched by God or some such thing that we never just talk! I have to say, I haven't yet read anything that I agree with about that question. I really don't see how you could say one part is better, or more important."
"And which one are you?"
He laughed again. "Oh, my, now a question like that would really not be asked by anyone else here! But so much more fun! I have
to be honest and say I'm not sure. It's not a cop-out: I'm really not sure. I definitely have no will at all. Look at how I just went along with being their leader, even though it's the thing I least want! I have some reason, surely, but not like Jack. And nothing like Tanya's emotions. Again, it would surprise the people here, but I'm afraid I'm pretty average."
He had me so intrigued and enthralled by such an abstract conversation. I'd say I hadn't had one like that in months, but really, it had been long before the dead rose since I could talk to someone like this, probably all the way back to my days as a student. "And what about the flesh, our bodies? A lot of religions and philosophies make a lot of that, or say we've made too much of it."
He shook his head. "That's another one where I'm not sure anyone I've read has it completely right. But there is something wrong with the flesh, isn't there? I mean, isn't that what this is all about?" He gestured toward the window. "Look at them out there. Have you ever really looked at them—closely?"
I remembered the girl in the convenience store, and Daniel Gerard, and the little boy outside the gates, and I shuddered. And that wasn't even one day's worth of carnage at my hands. "Yes, I have. And I can't stand it."
Milton nodded. "I thought you had, and there again you see how we're each different. Jack can slice them open or blow them up or set them on fire, all without blinking an eye, because it just makes sense to do so, like cutting off a wart. Tanya can do it because she's so angry at them. Either one could be knee-deep in gore, and it'd be like rain drops off a goose.
"But if you don't have either of those two reactions, the walking dead are most disturbing, aren't they? They're flesh all by itself—without reason, or emotion, or even will—simple, unguided, unadorned. Just flesh that won't lie down and die and go back into the earth. And, I have to admit, it is the flesh that causes me a good deal of pain and inconvenience, and gives the people here all their overblown opinions of me."
I paused, but the suspense was getting to me. "I'm afraid I don't understand, and maybe it's none of my business, but why do they think all these things about you and your… condition?"
He sighed. "Yes, I have to tell you, before you get some crazy, embellished version from someone else here. Please don't expect anything too exciting. It's just another story of coincidences and luck that brought me here, signifying nothing."
I smiled. "Well, I think now that at least it's not being told by an idiot."
He laughed harder than before. "Oh my, that is good! I should've known not to drop Shakespeare references with an English professor, but that one really slipped out without my remembering where it was from! I am so going to like having you here!"
* * * * *
Milton finally began his story. He had been a scientist before the dead rose. It was completely illogical, but I think, like anyone, I had to ask, "You weren't, you know, involved with… what happened?"
"Oh my, no! I worked in biotech, but nothing that was related to what happened. It was just cancer research."
I smiled grimly. "Funny to call it ‘just' cancer research, like it was some minor thing you were trying to fix."
He nodded and smiled back, less grimly than I. "Yes, I suppose it is." He shook his head as he told me how he had survived when the crisis had first unfolded. "I was a terrible coward, Jonah. I've told everyone that, too. I just cowered in my townhouse, with everything barricaded as best I could, and I didn't make a sound."
His wife had been on a business trip at the time and was almost certainly dead. For his daughter he had a little more hope. "She had been on a camping trip. Maybe she was far enough out in the wilderness that she might have survived. I like to think so, but I wasn't like you. I couldn't just walk across the country, looking for her. No, I just hid."
Like thousands of people in the same situation—exactly like Sarah, Tanya, and I had done at the beginning—Milton had sat and watched things unfold on the television till the power went off. Then he just sat in the dark—until his cell phone rang.
"It was some government agency," he said. "It was almost as scary as what was going on out in the street, the fact there was a list somewhere of anyone who worked in biotech. But there must've been one, and they'd worked their way down to me. They must've been desperate to be calling someone whose work was totally unrelated to weapons research or epidemiology, but I guess by the time they thought to research what was happening, most everyone with any applicable knowledge was already dead, or walking around without a functioning brain. So at that point they were just trying to find anyone with a Ph.D. or an M.D."
Milton told whoever it was on the phone that he was in his townhouse. The caller informed him that they would be there any second and that he should get ready by the front door. A few minutes later, Milton saw a helicopter hovering over his front yard, with two soldiers sliding down ropes.
They took him to a military airbase, but the undead had already overrun it. They were all over the runway, and the pilot nearly gave up at that point. "But the commander of the group was more calm and in command of the situation," Milton said. "He pointed at a big transport jet that some soldiers were defending, and he told the pilot just to land next to it for a few seconds, then he'd be on his own if he wanted."
The soldiers on the ground formed a ring around the ramp in the back of the plane, shooting, trying to hold back the dead till the group from the helicopter could get on board and take off. The plane was loaded with soldiers, some civilians, and piles of crates and supplies. They flew for a long time, and finally set down at an airstrip in the Rocky Mountains.
Milton smiled, recalling his own naďveté about the area. "I was so surprised to see snow on the highest peaks. I'd always heard of such places in the West, but I'd never bothered to travel. I guess I picked the worst possible time to start.
"When we got off the plane, I could see we were in a place where there weren't any zombies around. But when I looked at the cyclone fence in the distance, I could see shapes crowded there, and I knew what they were. They were everywhere, not just in the cities or on the east coast. We were so isolated there weren't enough at the fence to threaten us, but I knew then there really wasn't any escape from them."
Their group consisted of five scientists and a dozen soldiers. Since they'd been assembled so haphazardly and with no real organization, there wasn't much they could do. "We didn't have any plan, or any way to direct our work, especially since we didn't even work in the same fields. And the supplies were just a random assortment of lab equipment. Every time someone had any kind of an idea that might go somewhere, we had to abandon it because we didn't have the right equipment or supplies."
With such meager resources, they did little other than confirm what everyone already knew—that it was a virus spread by bites. With nothing useful to do, they puttered through the summer and early fall.
"All we really wanted to do was just sit back and enjoy what time we had," Milton said with that dreamy, wistful look of his. "The base was in a breathtaking caldera, one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. A spring bubbled up in the midst of the camp.
I'd never seen water just bubble up from the ground before; it looked like something in a storybook. There were flowers everywhere. It made me remember that, when I was little, my mother and I would pick wild strawberries in fields sometimes. I guess we were at the caldera too late in the summer because I didn't see any, but I bet there are some there now.
"Every day, I'd wish that we could just plant some crops and stay there. And I'd wish that there were some women in the group, if not for me, then at least to give us some hope of survival for the group in that paradise."
Slowly, it became clear that they couldn't stay there. Their food would eventually run out. The jet barely had any fuel, and they didn't know where to fly anyway. But they did have two old jeeps on the base, and they knew of other facilities like theirs nearby. Initially, they'd been in communication with them, though by the autumn, they hadn't heard from anyone in weeks.
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The nearest base was about thirty miles away, and apparently, it was a much larger one. They thought maybe it would have more supplies, so they decided to check it out. Milton went with two soldiers in a jeep.
"There were no zombies at their fence," Milton said, much quieter now, not as animated. "The gate was still locked, but we'd brought bolt cutters for just such a situation.
"Everything was deserted, silent, still. I'm sure you know, Jonah, being out there alone for so long, sometimes the loneliness and desperation make you get so optimistic that it just seems crazy. As I talk about it now, I know we should've run the minute we got there. A completely deserted compound, where we knew there had been dozens of armed men? How could we possibly hope to find something good?
"But we kept thinking maybe they had left the place, and maybe there were still some supplies there, and we could just grab them and go. Maybe it really was a good thing that they weren't still there, or they might not want to share with us. We'd tell each other such nonsense as we went from empty room to empty room."
He paused again, and this time he bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I told you, I'm such a little coward. I should be able to tell a simple story without getting all emotional. You'll have to give me a minute." He shuddered. He was shaking. "It was most definitely not a good thing that there were no people left there. No, no, not a good thing at all."
Chapter Seven
They found the labs in the compound, which were more damaged than the other rooms, with splotches on the floor of what looked like dried blood. The labs contained cages of various sizes, all empty. In one of the larger labs, they found all the equipment smashed and scattered all over the floor, and more empty cages all over. Some of the cages looked like the bars had been ripped apart. Puddles and smears of blood had dried everywhere.
They finally decided they'd seen enough and it was time to retreat. "We turned back to the door to the smaller lab, and then we saw them to our right," Milton said, very quiet at this point of the story. "I guess our eyes had adjusted enough to see in the gloom, or they had stepped forward from the deeper shadows in the back of the lab. Three big dogs. Their fur and skin were torn off in spots, matted with blood. And they had those eyes, you know, like the dead have, all cloudy."
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