by Ivan Turner
The snow was starting to come down heavily as he and Mellie walked to the car. Not surprisingly, the storm system had come in early. It would probably end late as well, dumping an extra few inches on them. Tomorrow morning, the whole city would be shut down. He would be out trying shovel pathways for people and cars. Maybe he'd meet some of the neighbors.
They drove slowly. It was normally a twenty five minute drive, even with the traffic lights. But today it seemed to take much longer. People were being more cautious on the road, and every single light seemed to be plotting against him. He didn't care. He had nowhere to be except home. He was beholden to no one.
"How about a little music?" he asked her.
"Stinky Pea!" she shouted back. How she had ever heard of or gotten interested in a band called Stinky Pea, he would never know.
"I think just the radio, Mellie. Maybe we'll get lucky."
But there was no music on the radio. Just a frantic DJ trying to piece together the catastrophic events going on all over the city. Heron had missed the beginning of the story. At first it seemed that a few zombies had been spotted in Manhattan. But then it was clear that it was more than a few. And not just Manhattan. For a split second, he was terrified. It had finally happened. The suspicions generated by Rollins' report that the Zombie Rights Association was a front for a terrorist building an army of the undead had come to pass. Zombies hadn't just appeared in the city. They had been released. Heron listened to the locations of zombie deployment. He and Rollins had found a map scribbled onto the wall of an abandoned office and identified it as a map of New York. There had been nine locations marked off on the map. There were six sightings of zombies so far. He tried frantically to recall the locations he'd seen on the map. But the map had been crude, just shapes on the wall. If they'd been able to decipher it, they'd have been able to avoid this.
Then, all at once, he calmed down. Kraemer would handle it. It wasn't as if he was going to see a troop of zombies marching down his street.
Switching off the radio, he dialed Alicia on the phone. It was hooked up to the dashboard so he didn't have to break any laws.
"Hi, honey," she answered.
"Where are you?" he asked, his tone a lot more clipped than he'd intended.
"Almost home. Why? Worried?"
"Have you been listening to the news?"
"iPod."
"You’re better off."
She grew distressed. "Why? What happened?" And after he told her she asked, "Where are you, then?"
"Not too far away. I've got Mellie with me."
"Oh, thank God. Do we need to board up the windows or something?"
He laughed a little at that, but Alicia didn't find it funny. He could tell by the chilly wind that came through the phone. "It's fine, honey," he said to her. "Our street will be perfectly safe. The cops and the army can handle it."
"I'm home now," she told him. "I just pulled into the driveway."
"I'm right behind you."
A minute later, he turned onto his street. His house was in the middle of the block. He pulled into the drive behind her. After removing his phone from its mount, he got out of the car, went around to the passenger side, and unbuckled Mellie. She ran to Alicia and gave her a big hug, shouting Mommy, mommy! Heron was following them into the house when he noticed the garbage can lying on its side by the curb. There had been a pickup that morning. The lid was over on its back a few paces away and already filled with snow. He gathered up the lid and the can and brought them around the side of the house. Then he went back down to the street and lit a cigarette.
Alicia hated it that he had started smoking again. Of course, she had every right to hate it. He tried to keep it from her as much as possible. He'd take a couple of extra minutes after a run to smoke a cigarette. He'd go down to the corner store a bit more often. In essence, he was smoking at opportune times and Alicia was pretending that she didn't know about it. It wasn't a recipe for a healthy marriage, but that wouldn't really matter in a few months.
For a while, he just stood there in the snow, taking in smoke, blowing it out. He looked up and down the street. There was no one about. There was no traffic. The snow was piling up pretty quickly, the daylight grayed by the clouds. Suddenly he noticed a face in the living room window across the street. A man, Indian by the looks of it, with a small mustache was staring out at him. He looked young but it was difficult to tell through the glass. He stared at Heron for a while, then looked up and down the street the same as he had. Finally, his eyes came back to rest on the retired lieutenant. Heron looked back unashamedly, just smoking his cigarette. Finally, the face disappeared from the window, but the front door shortly opened. Out came the man. He was definitely Indian. The skin of his face was dark brown. He wore a long black coat and grey leather gloves. The coat was open and Heron could see a light sweater and some jeans. He had been right about the man’s youth. Even the mustache didn’t appear to have grown in properly just yet.
“Good afternoon,” Heron greeted.
The man smiled. “Hello. I saw you standing there and became curious.” His accent was somewhat Hindi but sounded more English.
Confused, Heron asked him why.
“Well, I recognize you from the television.”
“Oh,” Heron said.
“You are the police lieutenant? The one who runs the zombie unit? Are we in danger?”
Now Heron began to understand and he began to laugh. His laughter completely confused the poor man. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I live here.”
The man looked up at the house behind Heron and then back at Heron. Once recovered from his initial shock, he said, “I apologize. I had no idea we had such notoriety in the neighborhood. With what’s happened, I would have expected you to be working.”
Heron threw away his cigarette. “I retired. It’s someone else’s job now.”
“Retired?”
Heron nodded. “Police work can get to you easily enough. When you pile zombies on top of it, it gets to you that much quicker.”
“I see.” The man sounded dubious.
Heron extended a hand and introduced himself.
“Pleasure,” the man said. “I am Satyadarshi…Satya.”
“Are you worried, Satya?”
“About zombies?” He nodded. “Of course.”
“Well don’t be. I worked the unit long enough to know that they’ll put this down before the night’s out. The snow might slow them down a little but it’s hardly the end of the world.”
Satya give him a cautious smile. “For my family’s sake, I hope so.”
“You look pretty young to have a family.”
“I am twenty eight. My wife and I have one son. He is seven.”
“What’s his name?”
“Namdev. He is a musician, my son.”
“I’ve got a five year old daughter, Mellie.”
Satya was nodding. “Yes, of course. I’ve met your wife. Elisa?”
“Alicia.”
Satya added a smile to his nodding. “My wife is Banni.”
“Why don’t you bring them across the way after dinner?” Heron invited. “We’ve got some ice cream and donuts in the house. Alicia makes great coffee. Say around seven?”
“That would be nice. I think we might also feel safer.”
Heron waved a hand dismissively. “I told you. There’s nothing to worry about here. The snow will be tough on the zombies, too. I’d be very surprised if any of them came this way.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Seven o’clock then?”
Satya nodded. Heron was pleased with himself. His fondest wish had come true. He had gotten to meet a neighbor.
***
After Kraemer and Homeland Security took over the facility at Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital things began to move very fast. All of the zombies in storage were destroyed. He detailed men to pull them out one at a time, shoot them in the head, and then burn them. He took DNA samples of each one in the
hopes that they could later be identified. All of the animal specimens were destroyed as well. Only the zombies in the Zoo were preserved. But as the final day of the facility loomed ever closer, even they became expendable. Kraemer's people started singling out individual zombies for destruction. The first few were common ones that Luco had chosen for individual reasons. Most of them had been early converts, their contributions coming over time. Then came Dr. Mwabi. Then Linda. Luco had fought for Linda. She argued that Linda's timidity was a sign of intelligence. Kraemer disagreed. He also didn't suffer from the sentiment of a plea for mercy (My name is Linda. Please, don't hurt me) or the guilt of having taken her from a broken down police lieutenant.
Most of the staff had been debriefed and dismissed. Since the operation was being moved down south, he didn't need them. They didn't even get any notice. It was a two minute meeting and a pink slip. People like Denise Luco, however, were a different matter entirely. Not only was her work important, but she was also in possession of a wealth of what had become classified information. And all because she had been in the right place at the right time.
Unless you looked at it from Kraemer’s perspective.
Despite his insistence, Luco had failed to give him a definite answer as to whether or not she would be moving with the project. She was torn between her responsibility to the human race and her responsibility to herself. At the beginning, she had worked endless hours going over the same samples and same data again and again. She could literally inspect it from memory. Then Naughton had rescued her from that by taking her out on a simple date. Giving her something else to care about had helped her to realize that she was not staving off the imminent demise of society. Though she still put in long hours, her conscience allowed her to leave the lab at night or take a day off on the weekend. She’d even gone away with Naughton overnight. She knew that he would follow her wherever she went, even if she decided to move down south. But she was reluctant to sign on with Kraemer. She didn't like his methods and she was suspicious of his goals.
It was still early in the day. She hadn’t had lunch yet, but she would soon. She wanted to go and see Zoe first. She felt a little bit guilty because she had been using Zoe as leverage for the past week or so. Kraemer wanted Luco to go down to Atlanta and she didn’t want to go. Kraemer wanted to destroy Zoe, either in spite of her intelligence or because of it, and she didn’t want him to. But the bargaining chip wouldn’t last long. After the weekend, there would be no more zombie lab under Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital. The place would be scoured clean. Even the Ward was mostly empty. Every hospital had a zombie infection ward now so they didn’t need to transfer every patient that came through the doors. Most of the patients that were responding to the aggressive chemotherapy had been moved upstairs. Those that were dying were left to do so in the comfort of the underground. The remaining staff had orders to destroy the bodies as soon as they expired. To Luco, the empty corridors and rooms were both eerie and nostalgic. When she had first come there, the place had been mostly empty. It had only taken a few weeks to populate the staff and Ward and the morgue. From that time on, Luco’s place of work had been as busy as any large corporate office. But not anymore. She wasn’t interrupted every few minutes by some nurse who needed a signature or some doctor who thought he’d discovered the cure. No one tried to intercept her as she made her way to the Zoo.
Still in her same cell, alone once again in the Zoo, Zoe Koplowitz was now making use of the furniture. Instead of huddling under the bed, she sat upon it. She didn’t talk much. Sometimes she didn’t talk at all. But those first words… Are you my mommy? Luco had always liked to believe she was immune to the lure of motherhood. She wasn’t. The wellspring of emotion that the little girl had opened up in her had taken her so by surprise. And now Kraemer wanted to kill her. Luco was not likely to allow that to happen.
“Good morning, Zoe?” Luco said into the intercom.
Zoe turned her head to look at her. Though her eyes did seem to focus, they still looked dead. The tests that they had run on her had confirmed that she was still very much a corpse. There was no organ function. The blood in her veins had long since changed its consistency. Much of it had dried up and crumbled away. But the vascular system itself was intact. The organs were intact. Everything about her was intact. And the brain was functioning. In fact, an EEG had shown some real activity.
“I can’t sleep,” Zoe said to Luco.
Luco jumped back in surprise. It was the first time Zoe had spoken in two days. Their last conversation had been a short exchange.
How do you feel, Zoe?
What do you mean, Mommy?
Do you hurt?
I’m hungry.
And that had been it. Luco had been trying to get a clarification but there was none forthcoming. If Todd Mayfield was any indication then the existence of brain function didn’t override the instinct to eat living flesh. Todd had made himself a nice meal. In fact, if he’d been given a fork and a knife, Luco wouldn’t have been surprised to see him use them. And that was the most chilling thing of all for her. What’s more frightening? A horde of mindless flesh eating zombies or one very intelligent one? Of course, who was to say that there was just one? How many more creatures like Todd were there out on the streets? The human race wouldn’t stand a chance against the cunning dead.
“Are you still hungry?” Luco asked. She had wanted to feed Zoe the way they had been feeding Todd but Kraemer had forbidden it. He had forbidden a lot of things.
Zoe didn’t answer her.
“Zoe,” Luco began. “Do you want me to help you go to sleep?”
She turned her head so that she could look Luco fully in the face. “The man tasted good, Mommy.”
Luco’s breath caught in her chest. She had no response to that. She just switched off the intercom and backed away. Zoe didn’t seem to notice.
Luco was more shaken up by the exchange than she had originally thought. On her way back to her office, she made a wrong turn and wound up in the morgue. Most of the drawers had been emptied. The labels were still on but the bodies were gone. The Butcher Shop was clean and empty. She didn’t linger. She didn’t need to be down there and, in fact, had promised herself never to return. This time she focused on where she was going and arrived at her office straight away.
The light on her telephone was blinking. She figured it would be Kraemer so ignored it while she ate a sandwich and watched an episode of Becker streaming over the internet. All the while, the little blinking light taunted her. When both her sandwich and her television show were complete, she picked up the phone and dialed into her voice mail. Much to her relief, it wasn’t Kraemer. It was Naughton. She called him back right away. He told her that it was already snowing and that she should be ready to go by five. He’d pick her up. They could go back to his place and get buried under the snow together. She told him that it sounded wonderful, and it did. But she also knew that she’d be plagued by thoughts of Zoe all weekend. She wasn’t sure that the little girl would still be there when she returned on Monday.
Pushing aside her emotions, Luco went onto Google and began searching through some medical web sites. Most of what she read, she already knew. She was really just looking for confirmation of a few things. There was an idea brewing in her head and though she knew she’d never be able to pull it off by herself, she had an idea of someone that might help. Rather than making a phone call, she left the office again and headed up into the hospital proper.
Kevin Yuan was a young doctor who, for some unknown reason, had developed a crush on Luco. She seemed to attract the young and reckless types. Yuan had already been in trouble twice for performing unauthorized procedures. Both situations had worked out favorably for the patient and therefore, for him. But he was courting disaster. What Luco had in mind was right up his alley.
With his low seniority, he had drawn the crappy afternoon shift during the snowstorm. It would probably turn into two or three shifts because no one would be able
to get in or get out for hours to come. That was Luco’s gain. She found him treating and infection caused by an insect bite (what kind of insects came out to bite small children in February?). He brightened when he saw her. She waited patiently while he finished his work. When he was done, he patted the little girl on the head, promised her a lollipop, and came over to see Luco.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
He looked around the ER. There were a few patients milling about in the waiting room but no one was coming through the doors. "In an hour, the only patients we'll have are the ones waiting to be admitted."
"I need help with a procedure."
His face darkened. "Is it an authorized procedure?"
"I'm authorizing it."
His face brightened again. "Works for me."
"Great. Can we use one of your exam rooms?"
