by Ivan Turner
Another face that stuck out in his memory was Todd Mayfield's. Todd had been a security guard in the ER. When the zombie had attacked, Todd and another guard, Sven, had moved in. Todd had scraped his knuckle, punching the monster. Then he'd fled before the lockdown. Sven had been killed, partially eaten, and turned. At the end, there'd been nothing left of Sven, but poor Todd had suffered the course of the disease and become a zombie himself. He now resided in the Zoo beneath Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital in Manhattan.
Heron didn't realize he was lingering until a nurse asked him if he was Shimon Goldfarb. He looked at her with the expression of the truly confounded, shook his head, and then proceeded out into the cold street. Once outside, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket, fished one out, and lit up. It tasted sweet. For the past week, he had been hiding his smoking from Alicia and from Mellie. He'd hid it from Naughton and from just about everyone else. Now, though, it didn't matter. He could smoke as much as he wanted. What more could it do to him? Maybe the cancer's return was a liberation of sorts. In fact, he did feel liberated. He almost felt invincible. He could do whatever he liked and none of it mattered because his finite time among the living had been mapped out.
Push Ups Gym was about two blocks from the hospital. He'd covered half the distance when he decided against visiting Abby there. Not only hadn't he called her, but she hadn't called him either. What good what it do to ask the questions that he hadn't wanted answered before? In four to six months, he would be dead and the suspicion of Abby's wrongdoing would die with him. In his heart, he decided that was a good thing. Just this once, instead of being a cop, he would be judge and jury. After hearing none of the testimony and considering none of the evidence, he had found her not guilty. And that was the way it would stay.
So he changed direction and headed for the train. There was some big meeting going on at headquarters in which he was supposed take part. That meeting was already underway. He'd informed Naughton of his appointment. Just a couple of weeks before, he would have postponed the appointment and not only attended the meeting, but run it and kept the minutes. Not anymore. Naughton had stepped in and taken on half of the responsibility. Heron would not have another emotional collapse like the one he'd experienced on Christmas. If he was only to have a few months of this year, they would be good months. He was going to go home at night and stay home on the weekends. He was going to be a husband and a father as well as a police lieutenant. He could fight zombies while he was at work and leave it to someone else when he was off duty.
The train ride was short. He went straight to the building and swiped his ID card for entry. In the last week, the city had converted the entire building for Zombie Task Force use. The commissioner had also renamed the Zombie Task Force. They were now the NYPD Undead Unit. Heron didn't think the name was particularly inspired. Everyone called them Zombie Cops regardless. Naughton was given the reigns of command. He didn't protest and smiled with thin lips during the press conference. Heron was his second. That was all right with Heron. At least they'd let him keep his rank.
With the daily messages in hand, he went upstairs to his office. It was the same office he'd occupied before. A number of people had been moved to other floors, but Heron had asked to retain his space. The last thing he needed was the hassle of moving. One of the people manning the phones informed him that the meeting was still going on one floor below. Heron thanked him politely and went into the office. Closing the door behind him, he sank into the couch and pulled out his phone.
Alicia answered on the third ring. "Is everything all right?"
"Fine. I was just wondering what you wanted to do for dinner."
"I'm with a client, Anthony."
He looked at the clock, realized that his timing was bad. "I'm sorry," he said. "Call me back when you're done."
Sighing, he went to his desk, woke up the computer, and began sorting through some of the reports that had come in over the weekend. For a while he did this, not thinking about cancer or dying or even zombies from more than an abstract perspective. Most of these reports were the same. The officers quoted procedure, covered themselves in case there was some question about the outcome. They were boring and Heron grew impatient with them. So he switched over to the reports from the week before. There were seven reports, one each from Horton, Parrish, Baches, Lobel, Lewinski, Henry, and Rollins. Lobel had been with Spinelli at the asylum in New Jersey. He was no one of rank, but then again no one of rank had survived the incident and someone had had to file a report. A similar situation existed with Lewinski. As a man inside when Smith had raided the housing project in Brooklyn, he'd been elected to file the report. Rollins was a different story altogether. He'd been in charge of the team going into the parking structure in Manhattan but Henry had been squad leader. Heron gave Rollins' report a thorough read and found it very interesting. Interesting enough that he planned to read it a second time but was interrupted by the arriving Lance Naughton.
"Good morning," Naughton said, leaning inside the open door.
Heron waved him in and offered him a seat. He played with the mouse a bit, clicked a few spots on screen, and then gave the captain his attention. "How'd it go?"
Naughton shrugged. "It could have been better. I supposed it could have been worse."
"Was there someone from Homeland Security there?"
Naughton nodded. "Ralph Kraemer."
"Is he a jerk?"
"Not really. He's a bigshot. He's got military experience, a medical degree, certification in all sorts of technology. He's a smart guy who knows he's smart. This afternoon, I have to take him over to Arthur Conroy to meet Denise."
Heron laughed. "That ought to be fun."
Naughton dismissed it. He already knew how she would react to this very smart, very assertive, very powerful man. She would be intimidated by him and her defense mechanisms would kick in.
"He was very unhappy about the ZRA operation," Naughton added, referring to very incident about which Heron had just been reading. "Too many deaths. He spent a long time on Spinelli's failure. He asked about disciplinary action."
"For Spinelli?" Heron laughed, feeling guilty about making light of the man's fate. They'd found Spinelli as soon as the area had been cleared. They'd identified him two days later.
Naughton nodded. "He didn't have the list of the dead. He wanted to go after Smith, too."
This time, Heron didn't laugh. There was a flash of anger on his face. "He should have been at the memorial."
There had been a memorial for the men, women, and children who had died that morning. Though every name had been read, Greg Smith's had been at the top. He'd been hailed as a hero, and deservedly so. Twenty people survived that afternoon because of his leadership. Lewinski had spoken at the memorial and cried during his speech. Heron had approached Smith's family and offered his condolences. Hank Smith, Greg's father, had been cordial and shaken his hand. But Deirdre Smith had been more angry than sad. When Heron looked into her eyes, he saw blame. For the first time, he understood what Eileen Stemmy, his partner's wife, had said to him when she'd cut him out of her life.
I wish every day that it had been you instead of him.
He was beginning to wish that himself.
"Have you read Rollins' report?" Heron asked as Naughton finally took a seat on the couch next to the door.
"I read them all," Naughton answered.
"I was just going through them but Rollins' was the one that stuck out."
"How so?"
"Well, for one, he discusses the tactical maneuvering of the zombies."
Naughton didn't answer, preferring to see where Heron was going rather than jumping to conclusions.
"He uses the word ambush several times."
"Is that it?"
"No," Heron answered. "The language throughout the report implies a coordinated offensive against Rollins and his squad."
"Don't you think you're writing too much into it?" Naughton was being very careful t
o remain neutral. Heron had become obsessed with a particular zombie. He'd had her locked up in the basement. It had been the first step to what Naughton thought of as his mini nervous breakdown. Naughton had ordered him to take a few days off, a vacation which had gotten cut short by the events one week before. On Heron's first day back at headquarters, he'd gone down to the basement to discover that both Linda and the cage in which she had been held were gone. He didn't say anything to anyone, didn't mention it at all. Naughton suspected that Heron had just gone down to make sure she was gone. If she'd still been there, he might not have been able to resist going down there again and again. Still, the captain could never tell whether his actions had engendered gratitude or resentment. As a result, anytime Heron implied that the zombies might have some sort of intelligence, he was wary.
Heron shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe. Rollins is a veteran with a fair amount of experience in hazardous duty. He served a tour in Afghanistan before giving up the military and joining the force. I don't think he'd use a word like ambush unless he meant it."
Naughton didn't answer for a time, just drumming his fingers on the desktop. Finally, he said, "These army guys have a language all their own, you know."
Heron considered the point of view, dismissed it. "Come on, Lance. We've each read thousands of these reports. They're dry documents that some sleepy cop assembles just as quickly as he possibly can."
"But not this one."
"Not this one. I think what's written down trumps whatever military jargon he might normally use."
"Paper beats rock," Naughton mused.
"Something like that," Heron agreed.
Naughton took a deep, considerate breath and then picked up Heron's phone. He dialed an extension and waited. Finally, "Nancy, it's Captain Naughton, how are you? Oh. Christmas and New Years? Sorry to hear that. No, I didn't work either day. Well, maybe we can make it up to on Valentine's Day." Pause. "Oh. Sorry to hear that."
Heron shook his head.
"Anyway," Naughton continued. "I was wondering if you could send someone to track down Rollins for me. That's right. Have him come to Lieutenant Heron's office. Thanks very much, Nancy."
He hung up the phone and looked up at Heron. They both laughed.
For a short time, they made small talk, catching up on things that seemed to have drifted away over the past few months. Naughton asked about Alicia and Mellie. He hadn't seen them in a long time. Heron asked about Naughton's relationship with Luco. Naughton was reluctant to open up but that, in and of itself spoke volumes. Heron had known Lance Naughton for a long time and had never seen him with the same woman twice. That he had devoted so much time to Denise Luco meant that he was digging deeper than ever before. What he hoped to find, Heron couldn't know. As far as he was concerned, all there was to that woman was on her jagged surface.
Soon, Rollins appeared at the door and Heron waved him in. He was decked out in full zombie gear. He'd probably been running maneuvers in the basement.
"Close the door, please, Rollins," Heron said. "We just want to ask you about your report."
Rollins, looking perplexed, closed the door and stood at ease in front of it. "Was there a problem with it?"
"We're having a disagreement," Heron said, building up to the point.
Naughton didn't have the time or the patience. "Rollins, did you mean to imply that you were attacked by an organized force?"
Rollins looked from captain to lieutenant and back again, wondering which one of them had drawn that conclusion. Then he grinned. "Yes, sir. I thought it was pretty clear. You mean you haven't been pursuing that, sir?"
Naughton looked at Heron, who flashed an I told you so look at him.
At that point, Rollins knew which of them believed what and he was suddenly overcome with the need to explain himself. "Sir, you weren't there. Our intelligence reported the place empty and we still went in expecting trouble. When it comes to zombies, you always expect trouble. We encountered a line of them ahead of us on the second level. We weren't really prepared for a conflict so I was going to order a retreat."
"If you were retreating, how did they get around you?" Heron asked.
"They didn't get around us, sir," Rollins responded. Heron hated being called sir. He'd never served in the military and didn't have the stomach for the protocol. "The ones behind us came out of nowhere."
"How does a line of zombies get behind trained police officers?"
Rollins put up a finger because he had the answer to that one. "Like I said, they didn't go around us. It was a separate group. We swept the first level but we didn't post guards on the access stairways. They lead up into the building."
"Are you implying that they were in the building the whole time?"
Rollins shrugged. "The building checked out as empty also. There were a few tenants clinging to their office leases but no one was actually conducting business there."
"You should have had that building checked," Heron said to Naughton.
Naughton didn't answer.
"It wouldn't matter," Rollins said. "They had less than five minutes to assemble and march down to the second level. Otherwise, they might have come out of the stairwell on the second level but that would mean they had about two minutes. You and I have seen a lot of zombies, including a couple that seem healthier than the rest. But a group of the best of them couldn't assemble themselves into a coherent unit in under five minutes, let alone two."
"So what are you suggesting, Rollins?" Naughton asked.
"I thought it was pretty obvious, sir." The only thing that was obvious was that Rollins was enjoying his knowledge of something that was still unclear to his superiors. "If you wanted to build a quick army of brainless, fearless recruits, what would you do?"
Now when Naughton looked at Heron, they shared a similar look of shock. It wasn't so much that the idea was so original, it was that they couldn't fathom how it had gotten by them. It was the most disgusting and dangerous thing that Anthony Heron had ever considered, but it made so much sense. "Who would do that, though?" he blurted.
Rollins shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. Terrorists probably. I saw enough of those guys in Afghanistan to know what they're about. They'll strap bombs to themselves and to children. They're not worried about infection or even the end of the world. Why should they care when they've got a hundred virgins waiting for them in Valhalla or wherever?"
"What's your schedule today, Rollins?" Heron asked.
"Same as every day. Maneuvers and calls."
Heron nodded. "Get someone to take your place in the unit and meet me downstairs in half an hour."
Nodding, Rollins left the office.
"What do you have planned?" Naughton asked.
"It's been a long time since I had the chance to do any honest to God detective work," Heron answered.
The captain approved. "What do you want me to tell our friend from Homeland Security?"
"Tell him everything, I suppose. Isn't he our new boss?"
"Not yet. But I'm not sure going off on an independent investigation won't just give him an excuse to nail us to the wall."
Heron dismissed him. "He's probably going to do that anyway. All of this inspection and interview nonsense is just a formality. I'm looking forward to going back to homicide."
A small grin creased the captain's face. It had been a long time since he'd seen a confident Anthony Heron. He'd missed that man. Struggling his way out of the couch, he opened the door, said his so long, and went about the rest of his business.
