by Bryan James
“We figure that out upstairs,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the approaching creatures.
Cursing, she grabbed the ladder and lifted herself up. Fred, looking behind me, moved almost surreptitiously toward the approaching crowd as I managed to grab his shirt as he did so, pulling him back.
“Uh-uh. Not this time, Rambo,” I directed him as I pushed him toward the ladder, hand on his shirt until he was on the rungs, climbing up. I followed quickly, getting most of my body up just as the first creature reached the foot of the ladder.
A hand grasped the leg of my pants, pulling my foot toward its mouth. It was a teenage girl this time, wearing the boisterous uniform of a school cheerleader, bloody legs appearing from underneath her skirt, scratches adorning a pretty face marred only by her vacuous, hungry stare. Her eyes greedily tracked my foot in her hand as I struggled against her unnaturally strong grip.
I kicked out clumsily and violently, my heel connecting with her jaw and forcing her head back. Grasping the ladder firmly with both hands, I brought my other foot down hard on her forehead while her head rocked backward, forcing her spine to bend further in a direction it was unable to accommodate. I could hear the neck snap; my foot flew free and the grip released as I jumped up the next two rungs, narrowly avoiding the remaining creatures, which now crowded below the last rung.
Reaching the cupola, I turned and looked behind me, seeing the roof awash in milling, gray, shambling bodies, shuffling persistently toward the ladder, moans a constant refrain as a chorus of the undead serenaded us in our ivory tower.
I sat down hard on the edge and caught my breath. Kate and Fred were breathing hard, Kate leaning against the railing, chest heaving, while Fred had plopped unceremoniously in the middle of the enclosure, legs crossed and panting like an exhausted dog.
“Well, shit.” I said. No one answered. No one needed to.
That pretty much said it all.
We sat there for a while, mentally regrouping, not speaking. I rooted through my bag, pulling out the box of wheat crackers. Finding the two-way radios, I turned one on, and static rose from the speaker. Realizing that the handset was virtually useless, I turned it off again to conserve the battery. Kate simply sat, staring at the sky, engrossed in her own thoughts.
Finishing my crackers, stomach tight from eating too much too fast on an empty tank, I rose and circled the small space, looking down and out at our surroundings. Front lawn, complete with our delivery truck lawn ornament, was still covered in creatures, some streaming in, and some simply milling about. To the right, the roof extended five hundred feet to the edge, that portion also by now crawling with zombies. Behind us, a bank of air conditioning units and hoses rose from the narrow ledge, backed by a large square box-probably the main unit.
“Any ideas?” Kate, who was now squatting over her own bag, asked suddenly, her hand searching for something as she looked at me.
“Not at present. You?”
“Nope. Was kind of hoping you might be some sort of insane-savant. You know, crazy, but in an autistic, supernatural kind of way?” It sounded like she was smiling, but her head was down now, examining the energy bar she had located. Good.
At least she wasn’t pissed at me anymore. Even though I probably deserved it.
“Not so much. But I played one on TV once.” She chuckled briefly, and then was quiet for a moment. I stared over the side. The school was surrounded to the sides and the rear by forest, which gave way in a half mile to the roads we had been on. The strip mall across from us included a chicken wing joint, a cell phone shop, and some sort of small grocery store or bodega. It was backed by a neighborhood, houses looking empty and abandoned. A fire was burning steadily through one of the homes, and an overturned car stood forlornly abandoned in the middle of the road leading into the development. Randomly, a shuffling form would cross a yard or a street, searching in vain for food. But other than the undead, there was no movement, no sign of actual life.
The moaning from below had gotten louder, as the creatures’ numbers were being slowly augmented by those from the ground level that were climbing to the roof for a meal. Talking helped relieve the pressure of what now seemed the inevitable: that we would die up here, absurd casualties of a bizarre mass-extinction event.
“You got family around here?” I asked, genuinely curious and desperate to hear something other than the moans, as I turned purposefully away from the edge and leaned against the railing.
She shook her head. “I have a sister in Philadelphia, but my mom lives in California. Dad died a few years back.” She stuck a cereal bar into her mouth, biting off a huge piece and swallowing her first bite before she continued. “I was actually going to go visit her this weekend. My sister, I mean.”
She looked down at our admiring throng. “So much for that plan. You?”
“Nah. My dad died when I was young and my mom left us when I was seven. Lived with our grandparents until we went to college. I’ve got a brother, but he’s in the Air Force, stationed in Kuwait the last time I heard from him.” I looked away.
“Got any friends around here?” she asked tentatively, as if she was sensitive to the peculiarities of my specific… circumstances.
“Big movie star like you has got to have a bunch of friends, right? People to run around with in fancy cars, share the mutual aversion to underwear and classy behavior-you know, standard stuff?” She said it with a smile, trying to be nice.
I felt my face tighten, even as the forced smile came to my mouth. “Maria was my only family. And as to friends… well, in my line of work-my former line of work, I should say-you don’t get to know a lot of people. I mean really know. Sure, you’re around a bunch, you talk to people, you have a ton of acquaintances, but there aren’t a lot of real relationships there.”
I grunted, looking up and squinting into the mid day sun. “And after the trial and everything…let’s just say I didn’t get a lot of fanmail.”
She didn’t reply, just looked at me briefly, then back to her bag. Fred sat up, looking at a flight of birds that had erupted from the trees and taken to the skies. A mile or so away, another flight followed suit. Funny, I thought. Haven’t seen a lot of birds since this started. I wonder if they sense something. How could they not?
I grabbed the radio and turned it on again, moving the frequency dial around to the different locations, listening for any sign of life.
“So,” I asked, hoping the attention I was paying to the radio masked the desire I had for an answer to the question I had asked myself earlier this morning, “can I ask again what makes you doubt my insanity?”
She looked up from her bar, chewing thoughtfully. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her looking at me but refused to meet her gaze. She could probably read me like a book.
Yep. All sorts of theories, I was sure of it.
“The reports had timing problems,” she started off simply, laying her bar on the ground and reaching up to unbind her hair, “specifically the coroner’s report.”
She pulled her hair back tightly, retying the ponytail.
“The police report said that cause of death was blunt force trauma to the left side of the head. Golf club, I believe?”
A question.
“Putter.” I responded, resenting the memory.
“Right,” nodding, arms now to each side, supporting her weight as she leaned back, “so she was supposedly killed by your putter around… I don’t remember the time… let’s just say 4 or 5. Well, the coroner’s report indicated that her major organs had shut down hours before that, maybe four or five hours before. That’s a big difference, wouldn’t you say?”
Another question. “I suppose.”
Four hours? I didn’t remember that.
“So to the lay person, that seems to say that she was already dead, right? But the police report said that the death was caused by the blow, and that was corroborated by the evidence at the scene: the blood spatters on your shirt, the blood on the walls, the pl
acement of the body, et cetera.”
She stopped, looking over my shoulder into the distance. “Question is, how do we account for that?”
The mention of blood brought the familiar images to mind; the blood on the walls, the putter, the sounds from the bathroom. But another image, this one new: I was walking to the bedroom, calling out her name, wondering why she wouldn’t answer. Seeing her jacket on the bed, a file folder, a name: Lazari? Larzos? Lazarus? I think it was Lazarus. Yes, definitely. I picked up the folder, curious. I turned around when I felt a hand on my shoulder…
“Mike.”
I started, eyes refocusing on Kate, who looked at me with concern. “I’m sorry, maybe this is too much for you. I should have -“
“No, no. I think it helps. I’m getting new flashes, new images. It’s been so long since I’ve had new memories, it’s just a rush when they hit me like that.”
Looking around, trying to shift the focus off of me, I looked at her hand, noticing for the first time she didn’t wear a ring. She looked at me, noticing me noticing. She smiled crookedly. “No, I’m not,” she said, looking away. “I was dating someone for a while. A computer guy. Did work for the Army at Fort Dix.”
Hopefully, I looked up, trying to act neutral, suspecting that I didn’t look it.
“For a while? Kind of implies ‘not any more,’ doesn’t it?”
“It didn’t work out. I realized after a while that the only way I could get him to pay attention to me was if I had monitors for breasts and a keyboard for an ass. You can’t build a new relationship on that kind of foundation.”
The mental image hit me and I couldn’t stop the laughter from first bubbling out, and then pouring. She looked at me, maybe intending to be offended, but she soon joined in. I let the laughter come; it felt good, and I couldn’t recall the last time I had laughed so hard my stomach hurt. When the last of it passed, I shook my head, part of the memory coming back to me, and turned to her.
“The name Lazarus mean anything to you?”
“Like the guy from the Bible?” She laughed a short, halting laugh. “Not really, other than the story about him and Jesus. Don’t exactly have the good book committed to memory.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Random. Probably nothing. We needed to think of a way out of here. Enough with the reminiscing. I didn’t think I could handle any more memories right now.
I picked up the radio, pressing the send button on each channel, speaking “Mayday” slowly and clearly on each. I repeated several times until realizing how infinitesimally small our chances of that finding anyone able and willing to help were. Kate scanned the horizon, waiving whenever she saw a plane or a helicopter, no matter how far off they were. Fred helped, waiving when she did, occasionally shouting “pancake” in excitement.
Putting the radio down, I moved to the rear of the cupola to scan the backfield, considering our limited options. At first, I thought it was Kate talking, or playing with the radio, the voice was so tinny, the volume so faint. I pounced on the radio when I realized what it was, twisting the volume up all the way and pressing my ear against the speaker. My eardrum almost burst when the next signal came through scratchy, but audible.
“… is the HMS Liverpool of… jesty’s Ro… Navy… have picked up your signal… are in the area… coordinates… can arrange a… copter rescue. I repeat… this is the…iverpool, please respond.”
I crushed my finger against the button, virtually tearful as I spoke to the small device in almost devotional attentiveness. I desperately repeated myself over and over, eager to hear the voice of a potential savor.
Chapter 13
The markings I hadn’t recognized earlier, in our flight from the expressway, were British. Apparently, the HMS Liverpool was anchored in the Upper New York Bay when this thing went down, and was running search and rescue operations in the area by helicopter. That was all I could glean before handing the radio to Kate so she could give them directions. I laughed when she used the gas station we had incinerated hours ago as a point of reference.
“Find the large oily column of smoke, go about five miles Northwest, and turn left,” was her last directional comment before she signed off and we settled in to wait.
The day crept on, and, relieved by the thought of escape, we talked. Her dad was a military doctor, her mom a nurse, so her general profession had been more or less a foregone conclusion before she was born. Just a matter of specialty, really. She was still doing her residency in King’s Park when it started.
As we spoke, I had more flashes. Not of that night, but of memories that had inexplicably been absent from my head until now. Maria and I eating dinner, scenes from my last movie, sailing my boat, stuff like that. Oddly, most of it seemed recent, like months of memories before her death had been suppressed or pushed to the back of my head, only to resurface now for some reason.
Kate explained in a little more detail the inconsistencies in my case, and I listened intently. The basic idea was sound: how could I have caused Maria’s death, if her body had shut down hours before I got home?
This was never mentioned, was never brought up-to the best of my memory, at least-in my discussions with my attorneys. These memories were coming back piecemeal, but more rapidly, and still I had no consciousness of these flaws. Had they not noticed? Had I dropped half a million dollars on those empty suits only to have them miss this?
It seemed inconceivable, but there it was. I asked about the details, listening to the response and hoping for more memories. Now drinking them in, relishing their contribution to making my mind whole again.
As the sun reached its midpoint and she closed her eyes to join Fred in catching a nap, I tried to let the memories come. Some came, some continued to elude me. Maria was there when I got home, but she didn’t respond when I called out. When I reached the bedroom, I had seen a file folder marked “Lazarus” with a red binding and full of paperwork, but I hadn’t opened it. Just really picked it up out of curiosity while noting that the bed hadn’t been slept in.
She had startled me when she put her hand on my shoulder, but the memory of what happened next was still a nymph, darting behind the trees of my mind, which I still couldn’t see for the forest.
What the hell was Lazarus, and why hadn’t she gone to sleep? Why had she brought the file home? That stuff was supposedly classified. Maybe something was wrong, maybe she had to bring it home to protect it. To destroy it? She had been working on cell reanimation-maybe Lazarus was a code word for that project. And she had said there were problems with the program. Hiccups, she called them. That they had technically reanimated cells but that there were glitches: problems that needed to be addressed.
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand, the constant moaning a tortuous reminder of where we were. Was it possible that this was a product of their research? That Lazarus, if that’s what it was called, had escaped or been let loose? I shook my head mutely as I considered it. I still couldn’t let myself believe that Maria would be party to such research: science with such destructive potential and such lethal and global consequences. Not Maria, whose eyes lit up with excitement when discussing mitosis, who loved to take walks and smiled so easily. No, not knowingly. She wouldn’t have participated knowingly.
I took solace in that thought, and scanned my mind for more details. She had discussed remedying the problems; that a Doctor Kopland on staff was the best, was working on the abnormalities.
What if he succeeded? This was months ago; he had had time, if he continued to work on it. Could a cure possibly exist? Something that Maria had helped start, that she had tried to protect or save, and that he had finished?
Or this could all be a figment of your imagination, the voice appeared unbidden and unwelcome from the back of my mind.
Isn’t it all just a little too convenient, it asked dryly, sarcastically.
That you, an insane person after all, would hold the answer, the road map to redemption for mankind’s newest plague?
&
nbsp; It-or I-was laughing, genuinely amused.
Isn’t it just a tad more likely that you’re back in your bed, strapped to the steel frame, frothing at the mouth?
No. It wasn’t possible. That would be absurd.
Oh really? Can’t you see why you’d create this story? You’re an actor for God’s sake, you know scripts. What better to redeem your deepest regret; your darkest, vilest hour, than a new story? One where Maria is a hero, and you-a washed out movie star-hold the answer to mankind’s very salvation and can act in one final role as the goddamn savior of the human race! One where you aren’t a certifiable whack job, destined to drool out your lonely, pitiful days in a state sanatorium and, with this, the tone changed from aggressive to sly, there’s a chance that this little flame you’re harboring deep down for Doctor Hottie might get stoked a little higher, a little hotter? Can you say happy ending?
More laughter, now, amused more at the joke than the concept.
My head was silent for a moment, my mind afire with the agony of this possibility; my confusion and my anger boiled inside me, guilt and weariness battling for supremacy over my tortured head. Doubt crept into an unwanted corner of my consciousness, perched just out of range but clamoring for my attention nonetheless.
Or, this, the voice said dismissively and effecting the verbal picture of a shrug, maybe it is real.
You could jump down there and find out. See if mind can really win out over matter.
My foot moved, and my arm was pushing against the floor-did I ask it to do that?-to lever myself up, when the torture of this internal dialogue was interrupted by the hiss of the radio, much clearer, much more intelligible than the last transmission. Kate started awake, eyes sleepy but alert. Fred grunted, still asleep.
“This is Lieutenant Hartliss of the HMS Liverpool, and I am approximately 3 kilometers from your location,” the voice was loud and confident; I noticed in passing that he pronounced Lieutenant left-tenant. Ha. Silly Brits.
