by Bryan James
Earl shook his shiny head and stood up. “Go down this aisle, turn left. We don’t stock beds, but the futon mattresses will work. Linens are two aisles over. I’m going back to my office. I’ve got security cameras in there that I can see our friends in the garden section on. I’ll get on the intercom if they make a move.”
He started to walk away, and suddenly stopped, turning and looking at me.
“Anyone ever tell you that you look like that guy from the movies, what was his name… he had that line from that one movie… ”
The voice inside was sudden and sardonic.
Aww, isn’t that special? Someone knows who you are!
Shit, shit, shit.
“Yeah, I get that all the time, especially from the other janitors. Gets annoying,” I finished, trying to sound pissed off so he’d leave it alone.
But he didn’t.
“What was that line he said when he killed a bad guy…?”
“Man, I don’t remember. Look we’re tired, so…”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. Damn, it’s gonna bug me all night.” He walked away for real this time, muttering to himself and shaking his shiny head.
Kate looked at me, but thankfully no glint of recognition. “I’m gonna check the break room for a shower,” Kate said, grabbing her shovel and her lab coat, which she had tossed to the ground during the barricading.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said, looking down at my jumpsuit, which was covered in the blood and fluids of Erica and No-Name, and thinking about my earlier close encounter with Conan. What a day.
What a damn, dirty, nasty, horrible fucking day.
Fred and I moved toward the house wares section, passing through the toy aisle and the electronics, and on through kitchen wares. As we passed a rack of cooking utensils, Fred’s attention was diverted. I stopped when I realized he wasn’t following, and walked back to the corner of the aisle, looking back at what had halted him. He was staring at a variety of frying pans, 6, 8, 10 and 12-inch varieties; stainless steel, cast iron and Teflon, all stacked neatly in rows. He slowly touched a 12-inch stainless steel job, almost caressing the handle. He pulled his hand back and started humming to himself, all the while staring at the pans.
“Fred.” No response.
“Hey, Freddie!” Just staring.
“Pancake!” I said, and his head whipped around, eyes glaring at me in confusion-and was that suspicion? He softened his look almost immediately, but shot his hand out and grabbed the handle of the stainless steel 12-inch pan, and tore it from the rack. He looked back at me and nodded once, strongly and confidently.
“Pancake,” he said, in a voice that, had he said more than that, would have brooked no dissent. As it was, there was little to disagree with. In a world seemingly overrun by zombies, the previously inane becomes commonplace.
Pancake, indeed. I nodded, smiling.
He walked past me to the vacuum cleaner rack, still clutching his new acquisition, and turned back, shooting me a look that said “let’s go, what’s the hold up?”
I shook my head, and caught up as we detoured through the clothes department. We each grabbed a new outfit, both of us taking a while to figure out what size we were, not having had the responsibility of clothing ourselves for years. I picked up a pair of cargo pants, a tee shirt, and a leather jacket, grabbing a pair of heavy boots and a knit hat as an after thought. Although the summer weather was still warm, I figured that the long pants and the thick leather might serve some deterrent to teeth and nails.
Fred picked out a pair of pajamas, which I replaced after laughingly dispensing with the mental image of him, his frying pan and his Winnie the Pooh PJ’s facing off against the zombie hordes. We grabbed some jeans and a sweatshirt instead, and made it to house wares.
We each found a futon mattress and laid it out in the aisle. Kate found us fifteen minutes later, having quickly found and used the break room shower and a new change of clothes: jeans, a long-sleeved tee shirt, and a leather jacket. I smiled at the matching outfits. She also must have seen the advantage of boots over sneakers, carrying a pair in her left hand and her shovel in her right.
Fred and I took turns at the shower. He cleaned off first and headed for bed, and while I stood under the spray of the shower watching at least three different blood types head to the sewer, I couldn’t stop wondering whether this was all a hallucination. I was, in fact, legally insane, was I not?
This was, in fact, an insane scenario, was it not?
I was, in fact, hearing a voice in my head, was I not?
Indeed you are. Or maybe I’m the one with the voice in my head? Ever thought of that?
God, what an annoying fuck I was. It all seemed so real, but didn’t hallucinations seem real? Wasn’t that what made them a problem?
Who am I to judge-all I can do is keep on and hope to outlast the creatures outside, or the one within, whichever is real. Fuck, what a trip.
I dried off, threw on my new clothes, and stumbled back to my futon.
Too tired to bother with sheets, I laid down and stared at the tiled ceiling, finally catching my breath after what could only be described as a difficult day. Beside me, Fred was already snoring. Kate had found a brush, and was trying to get her hair in working order. Really a beautiful woman, I thought, as she pulled the brush through her long hair in consistent, hypnotic strokes.
As I drifted off, I thought: too bad she’s a shrink.
To which the voice in my head replied, softly this time: Too bad you’re insane.
Chapter 8
“You mean like Goofy, and Mickey Mouse?”
She looked at me crossly, putting on the oven mitts and opening the oven door.
“No, not like Goofy. Not cartoons. We’re talking about cells here, just little, tiny microscopic cells.” She put the roast in and shut the door, her long blond hair falling over her shoulders as she leaned forward to examine the temperature.
“Reanimation. Just sounds funny. Like Goofy.” I popped a tortilla chip into my mouth and sat down at the bar between the kitchen and the living room, watching her move to her next task.
“The word animation is not owned by those cartoons you watch on television, you know. It can be used scientifically too.” She was washing lettuce now.
“When you animate something, you make it move, give it life. When you reanimate something, you’re taking it from an inert or dead state and literally reviving it…bringing it back to life.” She tore the leaves from the head, and tossed the stalks into the disposal.
“Just like new?”
“Mostly, yes.”
“Mostly doesn’t sound convincing.”
She made a face and shrugged. “It’s a very complicated process. There are issues, but the fact that it’s possible lets us know that nothing is beyond our capabilities.”
“How do you even begin to know how to do that? I mean, aren’t cells really small? You guys must have really tiny needles.”
The chips were really good. I wonder if we had salsa. I think we did, but that was weeks ago. Maybe months. Would it still be good?
Another dirty look. “Honestly, Michael. If I didn’t think you were at least half kidding, I’d divorce you. I don’t want idiot offspring running around the house trying to plug the dog into the electrical outlets.”
“Ouch! Okay, so you don’t use tiny needles to jab the tiny cells. So how, then?”
More tearing and crunching as she smashed the stalks into the disposal, reaching across the sink to flip it on. The kitchen hummed with the sound of disintegrating vegetable, and then went quiet again. The timer for the meat ticked away slowly in the background.
“We have a lot of expensive equipment,” she said, shaking her hands over the sink and drying them with a striped dishtowel. “The scientific equivalent of your video game system-the Xbox or Playstation of the scientific world.”
“So how do you know when they’re reanimated?”
I walked to the fridge door, mouth full of chips. O
pening the door, checking for the salsa. I think it was a red bottle.
Her voice rose excitedly. “They reactivate. They start doing all the things cells do when they’re healthy. With some minor exceptions.” Tossing the clean leaves into the salad spinner, she pushed pushed the button to spin them dry.
“Minor exceptions?” I said, absent-mindedly.
Ah ha! Expiration date… damn! Wonder if it’s still good anyway.
“Like I said, we have had some issues. There are some… anomalies… in their functioning. But the fact that we’ve been able to get them back after they were, for all intents and purposes, dead, is mind blowing!” She was getting more excited as she spoke, gesturing with her hands, eyes wide and bright, and lettuce momentarily forgotten.
“Definitely not good.” I grimaced, and shook my hand in the sink, running water over my finger, where globs of overripe salsa still clung tenaciously.
“Temporarily, no, it’s not,” she went on, “But we’ll get them worked out eventually-we’re making tremendous progress every day. The subjects are getting progressively more active and the cells are… I mean, the biggest step has been taken.” She slowed down and took a breath.
“Reanimation of dead cells is meteoric progress in this field. No one has ever gotten this far. Some hiccups are to be expected, but Dr. Kopland is the best in the field. We’ve been working on the problems, and we think we have a solution.”
“I’m sorry, what’s looking good?” I had missed something here.
She sighed, turning back to the lettuce and transferring it to a tossing bowl. She sprinkled dressing on it, and added baby tomatoes. She reached for the carving knife, turning toward me. The kitchen flashed in my mind’s eye, and the scene became black and white; it stuttered in fits and starts, like a poorly buffered video or a choppily edited film.
Flash.
Suddenly, it was no longer Maria. It was something entirely different, but the same. Eyes lined in red, graying skin sallow on the bones of her face, mouth agape, she staggered toward me.
“Maria?”
Flash.
She was on me. I struggled, but she was stronger than she had any right to be. I threw her off and ran for the door. But my legs wouldn’t move.
Flash.
I was back on the floor. My hand throbbed in pain, and I felt her convulsing jaws close on my throat. Dishes fell to the floor as our entwined legs slammed into the counter.
Flash.
I couldn’t breath, and my face burned; fever was a furnace in my head. I thrashed on the ground, helpless. Her body lay prone nearby. In the hall. Not the kitchen. Even in my pain and disorientation, I knew this wasn’t right.
Flash.
I awoke, sweaty and screaming, to the anxious stares of Fred and Kate, looking worriedly around, searching for the danger. I was sitting bolt upright, breathing hard. I blinked in confusion. It was one of those dreams that seemed so real, but felt so wrong. Wrong, but familiar. Like parts of a real story had been superimposed on a fiction.
Starling Mountain. Jesus, how had I forgotten? They were doing work on reanimating cells. That must have been why the name shot to my head after my black out. Could Maria’s employer have had a hand in this? Walking corpses seemed a far fucking cry from reanimated cells, but the science seemed similar. Creepy as shit, but technically similar.
I told myself it was impossible. Maria would never have condoned something like that. The potential side effects and ramifications of that kind of science weren’t her thing. She was always a cellular-level kind of scientist. She didn’t even like using rats-no, it wasn’t possible. It had to be just a coincidence.
“You OK?” Kate seemed concerned. But there was something in her eyes that was more than concern for me. Was she scared for me.
Of me?
“Yeah, ” I responded breathily, shaking my head. “Just had a bad dream. What time is it?”
She checked her watch. “Quarter to 7. We’ve been out for about 8 hours.” She glanced at my head. “Head healed up pretty quick; guess it wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
I touched my forehead, looking for the abrasion from last night. I searched, probing gently for the cut. Nothing. That was definitely weird.
My confusion was interrupted by a dose of concern. I could hear the rattling from the garden center in the distance. It seemed louder and more intense. Early morning daylight was visible toward the front of the store, and I rubbed my eyes, still struggling to comprehend my dream, struggling to separate reality from fiction. Fred laid back down, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Kate stood up, putting her hair back and grabbing her shovel and her pistol.
“I’m gonna hit the bathroom, check in on Earl. Maybe you guys wanna find some food?”
My stomach answered her, growling in response. “Yeah, definitely a good idea.”
I headed to the food department, grabbing boxes of pop tarts, chips, milk, and some sort of canned coffee. Adding a bottle of water as an afterthought, I headed back to the futons. Fred was asleep again, apparently not disturbed by my rude awakening. Kate rounded the corner at the end of the aisle, face anxious.
“You better see this,” she said, glancing at Fred.
I didn’t ask why, just rose and followed. She gestured with her other hand and turned around.
“You think Fred’s okay?” she asked as we headed away, “I’d hate for him to wake up and think we left him.”
“He looked pretty zonked to me-I doubt that will be an issue,” as we reached the electronics department, where a bank of televisions against the wall contained the picture of a disheveled news anchor.
“Shit, is this news live? I thought Earl said it went dead?” I could hear the anchor talking, but it was too soft. “Do you have the remote?”
She reached into her pocket, pulling out a remote, and zapping the televisions. “It’s not live. It’s another recorded loop, apparently. He repeats himself three times, same stuff, cuts out, and it starts from scratch. But it was just done about 10 hours ago-about the time that Earl said the radio went out.”
The volume increased, and we watched the haggard, clearly exhausted local anchor read from a wrinkled piece of paper, hands visibly trembling.
“…repeat, reports are still unconfirmed, but we have received indications that the cities of Boston, New York, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia have been overrun and are no longer safe. Additionally, rural areas from Maine to Virginia have reported outbreaks and incidents in smaller towns outside populated areas. I repeat, if you have loved ones in any of these areas, please do not try to reach them, and do not under any circumstances venture close to these locations.
“Surrounding suburbs of these cities are likewise not safe, and citizens are encouraged to remain in their homes, with doors locked. If you live in a multi-story home or building, remove yourself to the highest point, and barricade the stairwell. If you live in a one-story home, block your windows and doors, and stay hidden. Do not reveal your location. The creatures seem to be motivated primarily by sight and sound, and will congregate wherever a living person or persons are located.
“If you encounter any of these creatures, your best defense is to run away and attempt to find a strong, defensible position. If you are forced to confront them, remember that they are no longer like you, and no longer possess the capability of reason. They do not hear you, they do not listen to you, and they do not fear you. You can stop them only by massive trauma to the head or spinal column. Again, you must either destroy the head, or brain, of the creature, or sever the spinal column at the neck.”
The anchor’s head drooped for a moment, as people moved in the background, gathering equipment and speaking softly to one another in full view of the camera. He looked up as if, somehow, he had even worse news to report.
Turns out, he did.
“The government has been mostly silent in response, although there are indications that remaining federal officials are moving rapidly southward. The CDC has no indicati
on on cause, and individual units in the field are uncommunicative. Although National Guard units have been deployed to certain locations, there has been no indication of any nation-wide or systemic response. The White House has released a statement that the President remains safe aboard Air Force One, and is closely monitoring the situation. We have further unconfirmed reports that the Capitol was overrun before evacuation, and the status and security of the members of Congress that were inside is unknown.”
“At this time, our local reports indicate sporadic response from federal forces, with increasingly slow reaction times as the infection progresses. The military remains on full alert, but reports from local commanders indicate a severe shortage of troops. There has been no word from the military regarding any withdrawal of troops from the Middle East to respond,” he took a deep breath, “but all indications are that any type of mobilization and relocation on a large scale would take more than two months.”
He looked back down to the sheet of paper before him. “Again, I repeat, reports are unconfirmed…-“
Kate muted the reports, and we looked at each other. “Not something you see on TV every day, is it?” I asked.
“Not unless it’s in a movie,” she replied, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
What did she mean by that?
“Don’t watch many movies myself,” I shot back, overly nonchalant. “Tend more towards books, really.”
Not untrue, that. I had read quite a bit during my stay at the hospital: regional histories, fiction, non-fiction, even a big pamphlet on the history of the hospital. Amazing how much time you have to catch up on your reading when you have 13 hours a day to fill.
“I suppose you would, considering.” Her eyes held the slightest hint of a question as she gave me a sidelong look, flipping the television off quickly.
“What does - “, I started.
“Look,” she interrupted, turning toward me finally, “I know who you are. Not only are you very recognizable, but I worked at the hospital, and yours was not exactly a low-profile case. I know you were in 13, and I’m not sure how you missed your bus or, even more questionable, how you got across campus, into a janitor’s suit, and into my building.
