by Ivan Turner
She was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and her laptop. She spent a good many hours on it, reading the news from across the world, comparing the prices of furniture, electronics, groceries, houses in different states, houses in different countries, and anything else that drove the market. It was a hobby of hers. In all of his years, Heron had never met a woman who was so interested in finance. And it wasn't just prices. Alicia was an expert on money. She could write a detailed report on the types of currency used in just about every nation across the globe. She kept up with the changing values on a daily basis. The complexities of exchange rates and interest rates and economic heart rates were child's play to her.
"My first appointment is at 11:30." Alicia was a realtor, and a damned good one. "What's your schedule like?"
He shrugged, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sitting down across from her. She did not look up from the screen. "I've got to check in at the precinct, make sure Culph is doing his job right."
"Will you be going to Push Ups?"
He hesitated, not sure whether or not this was a sore spot between them. "I suppose," he said finally, not bothering to elaborate.
"How is she?"
He breathed in. "Not great."
"Mmmm," she muttered, still not looking up.
Since the crisis at Sisters of Charity, Heron had developed sort of a friendship with Abby Benjamin. His first two encounters with zombies had involved her. A month before, she had given him and Stemmy their best lead into finding out the identity of the zombie killed by Shawn Rudd. That lead had panned out and their investigation of Larry Koplowitz's home had cost Stemmy his life. At Sisters of Charity, it had been Abby who'd brought in the infected man that caused the crisis. She'd been trapped in the ER with a few other people, not all of which had made it out alive.
The connection between the zombies and Push Ups was one that could not be ignored. Though other zombies were popping up in other parts of New York and even other parts of the country, Push Ups remained "ground zero", so to speak. Dr. Luco had shut the place down for three days while conducting an in depth forensic analysis of the place, but hadn't turned up anything. According to her, the bacteria didn't survive long outside of anything living. She'd wanted to post a notice to the customers but the owner had flipped out, threatening all sorts of lawsuits. With the mass evacuation and the paranoia spreading, any public connection between the plague and the gym would destroy him. Without any solid evidence to the contrary, they couldn't classify the gym as a breeding ground for the bacteria so the whole thing had been dropped.
Abby's job, though, hung by a tether. Rather than looking at things rationally, the owner blamed her for the connection. After all, if she hadn't taken Karl to the emergency room, there would be no link. But, of course, Heron would still have made the connection. So he kept ties with Abby, asking her to watch the customers for any signs of sickness or irregularity in their patterns. She'd agreed she would and let him know if anything came up. So far, there had been nothing.
At any rate, Abby had become more than a business acquaintance. Heron had met her husband. He was a nice enough guy, if not a bit too aggressive. They had a two year old son, only three years younger than his own daughter. They were far enough apart that the two kids weren't going to be friends, but close enough so that there was plenty for the parents to talk about, although Alicia hadn't yet met either one of the Benjamins.
"And after that?"
He looked up. "Hmmm? What did you say?"
"Where are you going after Push Ups?"
"Oh. Back to the office, I suppose. We're still trying to lock down a pattern of the infection."
"No calls?"
He gave her the look. His doctor had told him that he still wasn't strong enough to go on calls. In his position as leader of the task force, he didn't really need to go on calls anyway. That was Culph's job.
She hesitated, focusing on maneuvering through some complicated internet links. "What time will you be home?"
He thought it through a moment, ran some numbers. "Around seven I’d say."
"That late?"
"Late start."
"You need to spend more time with Mellie."
"I know."
She looked up at him, appraising him. "Are you all right?"
Heron finished his coffee and put the mug in the dish washer. He didn't bother to answer the question. Good feelings aside, he was battling a lot of stress and didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. At least he'd stopped taking it out on his family. Moving over to her, he bent down and gave her a kiss on the lips.
"I love you," he said to her and then left.
***
CULPH was waiting for him at the precinct. Culph worked a lot. In fact, he worked so often that he was always there when Heron arrived and always there when he left. Over the weeks, Heron had been sensing a growing frustration in the young man. At first, he hadn't understood it, but as they came to know each other, the reasons became clear enough. A lack of action was making him restless. When offered the job, Culph had jumped on it, expecting to be in the thick of an exciting development, but none of that had panned out. There had been plenty of looters early on, but then the city had emptied out and their job and become even more dull. Even the calls that had come in hadn't really provided Culph with the necessary satisfaction. From Heron's perspective, Culph wished himself in the middle of the apocalypse, fighting off zombies with a shotgun and a pitchfork. For his part, Heron hoped it would never come to that.
"Good morning, Lieutenant," Culph greeted him, not looking up from his computer screens.
Lieutenant. Why was Heron always the last to know? Three weeks before, when Naughton had put him in charge of the task force, he'd promised him a pay bump. Apparently, they also needed someone of command rank to be in charge of the task force. No one thought zombies were going away anytime soon, or even ever. So they'd finally promoted him to Detective Lieutenant. The paperwork must have cleared over the weekend.
That thought came and went quickly though as the previous took over. Heron thought about a world where zombies were the norm. He thought about a world where people went about their daily business and kept an ear open for alerts about zombies the way they did upon hearing that a bear or a cougar had come down from the mountains. Police cornered the panicked zombie in a backyard in Weehauken at seven this morning and were able to subdue it using tasers and nets.
Why would anyone try to subdue a zombie?
Culph cursed under his breath and pounded a bit too hard on the keyboard. Heron had already learned that it was better not to ask what was wrong. There was only one reason Culph was ever on the computer. He was tapping out solutions to zombie scenarios. Some hotshot programmer in the department had worked up a simulation using a software engine with which he'd been experimenting in his spare time. Cross referencing with city data, he'd been able to shunt in schematics of just about every dark corner he could find. The user could place zombies, cops, and civilians anywhere on the map and request random appearances of any of the three. Using the software, Culph was constantly creating entrance and sweep strategies. It was more like a computer game than anything else. And if Culph was cursing, it meant he was losing.
"Are you riding with me today?" Heron asked him.
Culph finally looked up. "Are you going anywhere fun?"
Heron shook his head. "Push Ups. Maybe Chow's for lunch."
Culph's bored expression never changed. "Then, no," he said. "I'll run through some more sims and hope for a call. Maybe I'll run a drill."
Leaving Culph to his own misery, Heron went and poured himself a cup of coffee, fended off the accolades of having become a lieutenant, and made a call to Eileen Stemmy. He wanted to go by during the day and see how they were doing. He also wanted to go over some paperwork with her regarding Stemmy's will. As Stemmy had died, he'd made Heron promise to look after his family. It was a promise that Heron did not take lightly. But when Eileen answered the phone, h
e could tell that something was wrong.
"I don't think you should come," shw whispered through the line.
"Is today bad?" he asked cautiously. "I could come tomorrow."
She sighed and but didn't say anything else. "It's Lucia, isn't it?" he asked. Lucia was Stemmy's oldest daughter. She was seventeen. Ever since the death of her father, she'd been unable to look at Heron with anything but scorn and resentment. She desperately wanted to know why he had survived while her father had been chosen to die. Especially with his cancer. She didn't say it but he knew it was there. If the cancer was going to get him anyway, why couldn't he have traded places with Stemmy?
"It is," Eileen admitted. "But it's not just Lucia."
"Oh?"
"Anthony, I appreciate all you've been doing for us but I've hired a lawyer to handle the rest of our affairs."
"I see," he said, although he didn't. There wasn't anything too terribly complicated about Stemmy's legacy. It wasn't anything he couldn't handle. But he knew better than to push. "Can I help you with the expense?"
"No. I think…no, Anthony."
"Eileen, what is it?"
"I think maybe you shouldn't come around anymore."
This was a blow Anthony Heron was not expecting and didn't need. A month later, he was still grieving over Stemmy. His partner's family were the only people with which he felt that he could commiserate. As much as he loved Alicia, she was not a terribly sensitive woman. The extent of their recent problems had pushed her boundaries forcing her into a sort of emotional bunker. He felt he shared a kinship with Eileen because of their loss. And now Eileen was shutting him out. "Have I…"
"You haven't. You really haven't. But we have to close the gap, you know?"
"And I can't help with that?"
On the other end of the phone, he could feel her becoming frustrated. She had wanted this to be easy, without even realizing that it never could be. She was hurting him and he was pressing because he didn't know what else to do.
"Anthony?"
"Yes, Eileen."
"When you got home that night, and Alicia was waiting for you, what do you think was the first thing she thought when she saw you?"
"I don't know. Relief, I guess."
"I guess," Eileen agreed. "What about when you told her about Johan?"
This time he hesitated. Alicia had never really cared for Stemmy. It wasn't that she disliked him. It was more that they were different kinds of people. She liked a more organized, more dot your I's and cross your T's kind of guy. "Sad, I suppose."
"Do you suppose?" Eileen asked.
"Well what else would she feel?"
"Relief again, Anthony."
"Now, Eileen, that's not fair…"
"Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying she was glad he'd died. It was more that she was glad it was him instead of you."
He didn't know what to say about that. How many police officers' spouses had to face this sort of death? What did they feel when it was the partner?
Eileen continued. "I know I would have felt the same way. As much as I love you and I do, I wish every day that it had been you instead of him. Can you understand that?"
"I…I don't know."
"God, Anthony, I'm so sorry. I really am. I have to face that thought and the guilt that goes along with it every time you come here and I can't move on like this."
Heron felt devastated. Rationally, he understood that she wasn't wishing him dead, but that's what he heard. He heard that she wished he was dead and, short of that, she wanted him out of her life. It was heart wrenching, but he suddenly grasped what she was saying and knew that there was nothing else for him to say. His obligation to the Stemmy family had been abruptly cancelled. So he muttered a weak okay and a goodbye and then pressed the disconnect button on his phone before Eileen could even take a breath.
As he stood there, trying to sort it all out in his head, he thought that she might be right. He thought that she had to be right for herself and her family. His concerns were secondary.
***
"ABBY?"
…
"Abby?"
…
"Hey, Abby! What the hell?"
Abby looked up to find Whitaker looking strangely at her. "Hmm?"
"What's wrong with you?" he asked. He was holding a stack of papers and looking very much like he'd just run a marathon. Around her, there were people trying out the equipment all over the gym. Push Ups was running a special promotion and, much to her surprise, it had brought in a lot of people. Most of them were just taking advantage of the free trial, but they'd signed up a few over the weekend. It was the owner's way of trying to recover from the disaster that had been the New York evacuation. Membership had lapsed and payments by current members hadn't gone through. He blamed the city but the truth was that he himself had disappeared for two weeks while expecting Abby and Whitaker to pick up the slack. Whitaker had left for a week as well.
So they were busy but no one had been hired to help. There was a trainer, but administratively, she and Whitaker were left to run the show, working until their fingertips bled. Whitaker was actually taking to the job. In fact, he was doing much better than Abby at the moment. Her focus was shot to pieces. Three weeks had gone by since she had been trapped by zombies in the emergency room of Sisters of Charity and she still hadn't recovered. And, though that incident was the marker by which she kept track of the trauma, she knew that that particular horror had faded into memory. During the entire ordeal, she could think of nothing but her two year old son, Sammy. He'd awakened that morning with fever and an upset stomach. The minute she had seen Karl the zombie get off of that table, the minute she had realized what he was and how he had become that way, she'd feared that Sammy had been infected with the zombie plague. Even through the fighting and the running, it had been that notion that had worn away at her psyche. Nothing in her life had ever prepared her for the fear of losing her child. She supposed parents all over the world went through it every day. Every day another child was diagnosed with cancer or some other debilitating or fatal ailment. Every day another child suffered the worst indignities of which nature was capable. And every day a parent had to thrust her chin into the air, plant a smile on her face, and stare down her own helplessness. How did they do it, she wondered?
"Here!" Whitaker thrust the papers into her hands and she almost dropped them.
"What are these?"
"Membership forms. I've signed up eight more people this morning."
She looked at the disheveled pile in her hands. "Why are they all messed up?"
"Because I dropped them three times just trying to get through this smelly crowd. Do you think you can do some work today?"
A little bit of her grew angry at Whitaker's insolence, but the rational part of her recognized that he was right. She had to get it together or she was going to lose her job and that was not something she could afford. So she gave Whitaker a wink and set herself to the tasks at hand.
It was ten minutes later, when she was finally in a groove, that the door opened and Anthony Heron walked in. Over the last few weeks, she'd had a fair amount of contact with the detective. He'd asked her to keep an eye out for any signs of other customers being infected. She'd agreed, speaking with him regularly and reporting nothing because, of course, the gym hadn't been very busy. People who are running from the city or barricading themselves in their apartments aren't really making time to go and have a workout. It also hadn't helped that the Department of Health had shut the place down while conducting their investigation.
