by Amber Wyatt
The next experiment though, would be the ultimate culmination of his research journey and he was more than confident that it would work. Liam himself would put on a zombie suit, festooned with rotting meat, and he would film himself interacting with, and walking unnoticed amongst the undead! He had spent the last few days barely able to sleep with excitement and nerves. Now, suit finished, latest model squealer ready, and three-week old, rotting meat ready in picnic coolers in his bedroom, he was ready to go. Liam turned on his radio scanner, tuned to the police frequency, and prepared for a long wait by sitting at his laptop and posting his latest status update to let his community know that Project UIE was at its ultimate defining moment.
When he heard the triple Z code crackle out from amongst the background chatter, his heart hammered with an adrenalin surge like he had never experienced before. Liam could not believe it. A positive hit within five minutes! He had been expecting to wait for hours, maybe even days. It was an auspicious sign that the experiment was going to be a success. He quickly updated his status as “Heading out now. Wish me luck!” and with shaking hands checked and double-checked everything on his list and in his expedition bag. Behind him his tablet pinged rapidly with one incoming message after another, congratulating him and wishing him luck.
The undead had been spotted up at the entrance to the Everglades Pines retirement resort. Three of them. The retirement home had never been properly cleared as it was isolated, out of town, and way down the list of priorities for the Broward County PD clearance teams. The only live humans that ever ventured up there were thrill seekers, like the group that had just called in this sighting.
The 911 despatcher had notified a clearance team and they would head up there in a couple of hours after investigating yet another floater that the tide had brought into the docks. The undead in the water was unlikely to be successful in its current attempts to climb the slippery dock walls out of the water, but as per protocol, all dock operations had been shut down until the zombie was neutralized and removed.
Liam was delighted. It was the perfect scenario. He knew the route to Everglades Pines well, having used it for three of his previous experiments, and a two-hour window would be more than enough time to get there, film his successful experiment and then get out before the police arrived. After all, the main danger facing a professional Undead Interaction Expert like himself, was not the undead, but rather some trigger-happy cop turning up and shooting at him while he was still in his undead disguise.
Twenty-five minutes later, he pulled his mother’s car off the road two hundred yards short of the bridge leading over the small river to Everglades Pines. As fast as he had rehearsed in his bedroom, he laid out his suit, artistically painted and stitched to resemble a decaying body, opened the picnic cooler and started taking out the unpleasantly pungent meat strips and clipping them to the spaced-out rings sewn all over the suit. Jesus, he gagged, this stuff really smells bad. After the experiment was finished, he had decided he would throw the meat away and store the suit back in the picnic cooler. The meat stank to high heaven and his mother would go crazy if that smell were in her car. It took only a few minutes before he was dressed in his suit and fastening the chest camera to its harness on the outside. Then he flipped on his hood and mask, attached the head-strap and put the second camera on his forehead, picked up his electronic squealer and headed over the bridge at a brisk walk.
Although it was only late April, it was a cloudless day and under the bright blue sky and midday sun, the meat on the outside of the suit had already warmed up and was giving off a good ripe stench by the time he had crossed the bridge and walked through the gates of the retirement resort. Liam stopped abruptly. He could see the three undead walkers reported by the police dispatcher less than a hundred feet away. They had not seen him. It was time to get into character. He made sure both his cameras were on and then kneeled to set up the squealer. The electronic bait was a simple strobe flashlight hooked up with a small mp3 player. The most important innovation to the squealer had been to add a thirty-second delay to the beginning of the playlist, to allow him to move away after setting it up. Inedible and uninteresting to the undead after they examined it up close, this particular squealer, his third, was already itself a veteran of four experiments.
Liam set the squealer down next to the front gate to the resort and then retreated several steps back across the bridge. His plan was that he would imitate the undead and appear to be one of them, attracted by the noise and light from the other side of the bridge. Then, after an appropriate time getting enough footage for the proof of concept of the suit, he would turn around and slowly shuffle back over the bridge leaving the others to stare at the lights and listen to the music. Sadly, this would be Squealer 3’s last mission, sacrificed for the onward march of scientific progress.
Thirty seconds later lights flashed and music blared. Surprisingly quickly the heads of all three zombies whipped towards the squealer, and they all started moving towards the front gate. Liam himself started a slow shuffle back across the bridge towards them. Attracted by the noisy music another two zombies came out of the nearest building, the resort administration office. Then another two.
“Holy crap!” Liam muttered, grinning in delight under his hood, the rotten smell completely forgotten. Seven undead! All of them perfectly framed by the buildings and filmed on his two cameras. They would be walking right up to him; within touching distance. The Internet was going to shit its collective pants when he posted this footage.
The seven zombies walked slowly and directly towards the flashing light on the ground. From the other side of the bait Liam walked over the bridge towards them, making sure to angle his body and head so that they would all be within his camera shots. He mentally added a note to edit the sound on the footage later. Just off the top of his head he could already think of four other songs which would be much more appropriate than the current one booming out from the squealer. And while part of his mind was debating exactly which track would be ideal, the rest of him could not believe just how incredible this moment was! His mouth was dry and he was totally focused on keeping his gait slow and lurching. He realized that in fact he was moving a little slower than the zombies in front of him but, to his increasing excitement, they were not paying him any attention at all. He had thought his adrenaline was already sky high, but with the realization that his suit was actually working an almost unreal euphoria flooded through him. I’ve cracked the code. It works!
The undead were not only ignoring him, it was almost as if they had accepted him as one of their own. He had joined the group now, all of them standing in a rough circle around the squealer and his cheeks hurt from the huge smile that nearly split his face open. He panned carefully from left to right to get good close-up shots of each individual. Wait a second. Liam’s smile slipped. The stupid zombies were actually bumping up against each other trying to get as close to the flashing music as possible. They’re going to step on the damn squealer and break it. Liam realized he had obtained more than enough footage to show the success of this experiment, and that it was time to slip away while they were still distracted. Just at that moment the noise and light stopped. One heavily booted, male zombie had squashed the squealer flat.
Liam made a mental note that squealer 4 would have to be encased in something more robust. He started to step away but suddenly all seven zombies turned to look at him and he froze in place, his blood turned to ice. But they had just been attracted to his movement. Slowly he started to breathe again. As quietly as possible. The suit was working. This was fantastic footage. He was literally an arm’s length away from them, virtually close enough to touch, and yet he was invisible to them. The seven figures in front of him seemed to have turned into stone, standing unnaturally still in the manner of all undead when at rest. My god this is even more perfect than I thought. The suit really did work. For one giddy moment Liam was tempted to reach out and poke one just to see what would happen. But that could wait
for his next experiment when he had his lightweight, plastic armor suit under the zombie suit. Now it was time to extract himself and spend the rest of the day editing this unbelievable, never seen before footage. His mind whirled with countless images of what his potential future would hold for him. Women. Fame. Money. Women.
He started backing away slowly, turned even more slowly, with the zombies staring at him and then started shuffling back across the bridge. He stopped when he heard a noise behind him. Liam slowly turned to look. Shit. They were following him. They stopped, frozen again. As soon as he started to move, they began to walk and lurch towards him. He realized immediately there was nothing aggressive in their posture, it was just some kind of herd behavior. Curiosity? Maybe they think I have seen fresh prey? A thrill surged through him as sudden understanding dawned. Because of his suit, he had just made a breakthrough discovery in undead behavior. This is what they do. The only reason an undead will move is if it sees prey. So, if I move, it means there must be prey in the area. They are going to follow me until they see it too. Liam stood still for a moment wondering what to do. Then he started walking again, but a little faster than before, and then he moved even faster still.
He turned his head back over his shoulder. It was as he had thought; they had fallen behind slightly and the distance between them had widened. If he started walking really fast, or even ran, he thought he could easily make it back across the bridge to his mother’s car, unlock the doors and jump straight in before they got to him. Screw the smell of the rotting meat on his suit, he would happily pay for a professional valeting service to clean the car out.
With that plan in mind he lengthened his stride and hurried over the bridge, lengthening the distance between himself and the other zombies. He was nearly over the bridge when the police car zoomed up the road to the other end and blocked it. Behind him Liam could hear faster shuffling as the interest of the undead was caught by the flashing blue police lights.
Liam’s eyes bulged with shock and his jaw dropped in dismay. He could not believe this was happening. Of all the bad luck in the world!
A single policeman got out holding a shotgun. The cop was fair haired and overweight, with a bad haircut and a small moustache. And he was an hour and a half early. He said something on the radio, leaned in to put the handset back in the car and then unhurriedly racked his shotgun and took aim directly at Liam’s chest.
Liam did not even need to think. He had no worry about ‘breaking character’ in front of the zombies as he was pretty sure he could outrun them. He was terrified however of being shot in the chest. He waved frantically at the cop with one hand while using the other to pull up his mask and reveal his face. He shook his head and mouthed ‘NO’ silently at the other man.
The policeman goggled at him for a moment in surprise, then when he realized that he really was just looking at someone in a costume, he dropped the barrel of the shotgun and waved Liam forward with a disgusted expression on his face. He leaned into his cruiser and grabbed the radio handset again, keying the mike.
“It’s okay, Deborah, you can cancel that triple Z call. It’s just some kids dressed up, fooling around.”
Liam kept walking forward, panicking a little now. The idiot did not realize that the undead behind him were real. Now that he was out of danger of being shot, he did not want to shout and draw attention to himself from the zombies with his distinctly live human voice. He had to get closer fast and whisper to the cop to shoot the damn things. Screw harmonious undead co-existence, that could wait for the future. This situation was getting out of hand.
There was a garbled reply from the radio and the cop lifted the mike to his mouth again.
“Ten Four, don’t worry I’ll take care of it from here. See you in a while m‘kay?”
Then to Liam’s horror, as the policeman leaned in and hooked the handset back on the dashboard, he stowed the shotgun inside as well, and stood back up armed with only a notebook and pen in his hands.
That was when the two zombies came out of the trees behind the police car. They were running. Running fast, like goddamn cheetahs. Even in the old footage from the Galleria incident Liam had never seen an undead run that fast before. In surprised reflex he dropped his mask back down over his face and froze.
The policeman frowned and opened his mouth but Liam never found out what he was going to say because a fraction of a second later the first zombie hit the cop from behind, tackling him to the floor. Then the second one dived on top and they were both tearing at the man’s head and shoulders like rabid dogs, while the fallen man screamed and sprayed blood everywhere.
More zombies appeared, running out of the woods. And movement in his peripheral vision told Liam that the original zombies from the retirement resort had closed in next to him as well. Trembling inside his suit Liam stood completely still. The policeman’s struggles were getting weaker and weaker now as more zombies piled on top, weighing him down, and his lifeblood drained out across the grey concrete of the road. The zombies completely ignored Liam.
As he realized that he was being ignored, Liam also suddenly appreciated that he was the only one still standing upright. He quickly crouched over the struggling policeman, imitating the other zombies. Through his terror he suddenly had pure clarity of thought. The suit is still working. They went right past me to attack the cop. All I have to do is keep acting like them, and while they are distracted by the cop’s body, I’m going to slowly back away and get to my car. Relief flooded through him. He was going to make it. Hmm, although I had better edit that last part of the video. Liam had a strong suspicion that the footage would be pretty damning in showing that he had distracted the cop and lulled him into a false sense of security. With a shaking hand he reached into his pocket and curled his fingers around the car keys, getting ready to move unobtrusively and stealthily towards his car. No running now. Those running zombies were damned fast. If they recognized him as prey, they would easily catch him before he got to the car.
Liam was crouched low, directly over the head of the weakly moaning cop so he was able to see the exact moment that the cop’s eyes went blank and he died. He suddenly felt a surge of nausea but controlled it as best he could. Then something strange happened. All the zombies immediately stopped biting and attacking the body, and simply stood up. Liam had assumed they would carry on eating until they were satiated. Did zombies even need food? He did not know. He stayed crouched where he was not knowing whether to stand up or not, when suddenly the cop’s eyes flickered open again and he moaned.
“Stay down,” Liam hissed desperately in the quietest whisper he could.
But the cop did not listen. He suddenly jerked upward, grabbed Liam, shoved him aside and stood up surprisingly quickly. And Liam saw that his abdomen was just a gaping cavity, with his guts and his lungs hanging down over his belt to his knees. He was one of the undead now. The rest of the zombies ignored him and stood there frozen like trees. Liam stayed crouched on the ground where he was, face pointing down at the ground. He was in shock, he realized, horrified at the brutal death of the cop and also unable to believe how quickly he had turned into one of them.
He struggled to focus and wondered how he was going to start moving. Without any distraction from a meal they would simply follow him, herd like as before, all the way to his mother’s car. And he would not be able to outpace the fast ones. Liam decided he would have to just walk there slowly and not try and bolt. After all, if he simply opened the door and slipped inside, the zombies might not even see that as prey behavior. He looked up and realized that in a stroke of good luck the blue lights on the police car were still flashing and were acting like one of his squealers. All of the zombies were completely mesmerized by them. The lights might well be sufficient distraction for him to simply stand up in the middle of the group and walk away unnoticed.
That was when the dead policeman slowly turned to look at Liam.
Then all of the other zombies turned to look at Liam. His blood t
urned to ice in his veins.
“Not one of us,” the cop whispered clearly, pointing a bloody hand at Liam.
Liam snapped his gaze back downwards to the ground. What? What the holy fuck?
He was panicked beyond the capability for rational thought. Had he just imagined that? The zombies had started moving again, closing in around him. He kept staring at the ground, trying not to look like a live human, trying to calm himself by thinking of the stinking meat cloaking him. He remembered the cheesy mantra, Don’t Fear The Zombie, Be The Zombie and his mind clung to it desperately. They were all around him now, touching him, and to his horror he felt a gust of cold air brush across his back. There was a huge tear in his outfit and it was hanging down around his ass. The undead cop must have ripped it when he shoved Liam. He knew he should have double stitched the zipper at the back.
Liam realized tears were streaming down his face. This was like his worst childhood nightmares where he was terrified and tried to just hide his head in the pillows, but the monsters still found him, and this time there would be no waking up at the last moment. God this was such a stupid idea. He promised himself that if he made it out of this experiment, he was through with all this childish zombie shit, he would go back to school and study, and fuck all the vain narcissism that had lured him here in the hope of grabbing a little more online popularity.
Liam held his breath and tried to stay as absolutely still as possible, to stop his trembling. He could feel their hands probing his body with cruel indifference to whether they were causing pain or not. He could practically feel their bewilderment wondering if he was prey or not prey? Live meat or dead meat?