Land of the Dead

by Robert Swartwood

  By then they had been going out on drives, coming up here to the country to talk and neck and, eventually, make love.

  By then Denise had already shown him her poem.

  Now she turned her head slightly, just enough so that she could see him. She opened her mouth, shut it, opened her mouth again and said, “Sometimes I think about trying it again. When you’re at work, when Kyle’s at school, I’m all alone and I sit there and think about ... trying it.”

  The night she’d shown him her poem she had been very quiet. Conrad had asked if she was feeling okay and she had just nodded, said she was feeling fine. Then they came up to what they had begun referring to as “their spot,” and before he even turned off the car she sat up and said she had something to show him. Pulling the piece of paper from her pocket, unfolding it, Conrad’s eyes had for some reason been drawn to the necklace he’d given to her as a gift the previous month, to the small diamond reflecting the soft glow of the interior lights. When she did read the poem she only managed to get out seven words before quickly stopping, shaking her head, and crumpling the paper into a ball. A mistake, she started sobbing, a terrible mistake, and she said she was sorry and to please, please, please don’t turn her into the authorities.

  Poetry, literature, music, painting—any form of imaginary expression was illegal. Each consisted of traits that only zombies possessed, and for that reason alone any dead person that tried their hand at any of these things—even if they were unsuccessful—was considered a serious liability and arrested, charged, and sentenced to immediate expiration.

  This was one of the first things taught in schools, the very first thing dead parents taught their dead children. That the reason the living had failed was because of their imagination. It had corrupted their minds, withered their souls, and had created anarchy among its people.

  So Conrad knew the law. He knew he should have turned Denise in at once. But those words she’d read ... those words did something to him. He didn’t feel anything, of course, but the simple fact that she had written a poem specifically for him, for his dead eyes only, even when she knew it was wrong, that she could be instantly expired, made him fall for her even more.

  “But I don’t try,” she said, and looked him straight in the eye. “I know better than that now.”

  Henry hadn’t approved of Denise. In his eyes she didn’t have what it took to make a good Hunter’s wife. She wanted to go to school to become a nurse, a doctor, and this would not do at all. A Hunter’s wife was expected to stay home, produce a male child, raise that male child in the proper way so that he would someday become a Hunter. And Denise, Henry had told Conrad more than once, would be terrible at this.

  For some reason Conrad thought about this now as he watched his wife, his wife who had busied herself staring out her window. He thought about how this had been the true thing that came between him and his father, the thing that had enraged his father the most. Conrad never came out and said it, but sometimes he had hinted how he wasn’t really sure he wanted to be a Hunter in the first place. How he would at least like to have the option of doing something else. But no, Conrad was a Hunter’s son, which meant that he would one day become a Hunter too. And because he was Henry’s son, he was to become the best.

  “Denise,” he said, getting her attention, getting her to at least look at him. He wanted to tell her about how he had hesitated the other morning, how the worst thing that could happen to a Hunter had finally happened to him. He wanted to tell her how he was worried about their son, worried that Kyle might turn and what would have to take place if and when that happened. He wanted to tell her how he was scared about this new job, because he had been a Hunter almost all his existence and knew nothing else.

  But before he could say any of these things, his wife suddenly turned her head away. She leaned toward her door, as if somehow she would pass through the metal and still end up whole on the other side.

  “This was nice,” she said, “but can we please just go home?”

  Outside, those dead insects had gone silent, as if they had sensed the sudden tension inside the car and wanted to hear every word.

  “Conrad?” Her head still turned away from him, her body still leaning closer and closer toward the door. “I want to go home.”

  Conrad was turned toward her in his seat, his hand still on her knee, and he wanted to tell her everything. Not just about how he’d hesitated the other night, or his fear about Kyle, or what had almost once happened between him and Jessica, but about how he sometimes thought about writing poetry too. That he once sat there alone with his own pencil and paper but could never get past the first word, could never find the beginning, no matter how much he wanted to, how hard he tried. Because even though he was successful, even though he had killed over nine hundred zombies, he never felt like any of it came half as close to the risk Denise had taken by writing him a poem and then actually letting him see it, the evidence of her crime. He wanted to do something that matched that risk, that showed her his true love. But he could never get past that damned first word, and he sometimes wondered what kind of husband that made him, what kind of father, what kind of man.

  6

  The subbasement of the Hunter Headquarters was almost never used. It was dark and murky and everything was covered in dust. But it was where they kept extra storage, and where Conrad found himself that Monday morning, a dim bulb flickering above his head, as he tried finding a large enough box to pack his things.

  Most of the cardboard boxes were filled with miscellaneous files. When he found the box he wanted, he took out all the files, set them aside, grabbed the box and started to stand up, started to turn toward the steps, when the sealed metal door in the back of the basement caught his attention.

  It was this building’s entrance into the Labyrinth, those subterranean passages that serpentined their way underneath Olympus. They had been constructed over two centuries ago, after the Zombie Wars, when the dead had conquered this part of the world and began rebuilding the city. The fear of another zombie attack was still fresh, so the architects devised a plan to move around politicians and celebrities and anybody else deemed important enough to save if another such attack was imminent.

  The passageways were narrow and tight, and only had entrances to a handful of buildings around the city—the Herculean, town hall, all the police precincts—but there were occasional doors that exited into parks, gardens, any place that might be the easiest and safest way for escape. They had never been used, except the few times the police sent men down into the tunnels to make sure no animals or homeless had found their way inside. Occasionally a Hunter would accompany the police, and his first year in Olympus Conrad had requested to go along and had walked the miles upon miles with only a flashlight to light his way. And when he had come back to Headquarters, when he had made sure nobody else was around, he had used the tip of his broadsword to carve CONRAD LOVES DENISE into the cinderblock wall right beside the door.

  When he’d told Denise later that night what he’d done, she asked him why and he’d said because it was true.

  Now as he stared at that sealed metal door, he thought about the real reason he’d carved those three words into the wall. Normally he wouldn’t remember, but being with his wife last night, driving out to the country and then thinking about the poem she’d written him, and how once he’d tried writing his own poem before giving it up, before realizing it was a terrible mistake—those three words had been the closest he’d ever come to expressing something.

  But that wasn’t all. Carving those words had also been an act of penance. It was something he’d hoped would relieve his conscience, doing a good deed like that, but still he felt guilty. Even now, ten years later, he felt guilty. Because Conrad, like most husbands, kept more than one secret from his wife. And the worst secret—the one he regretted the most—was that one time he had kissed his sister-in-law.

  He and Denise had been married for two years. She had just gotten pregnant
with Kyle. They were hosting a New Year’s Eve party and of course Denise didn’t drink. But Conrad did. He got plastered. It was a good party though, everyone enjoyed themselves, and as the guests started to leave Denise said she was tired and went upstairs to bed. The guests thinned and thinned until it was just Conrad and Jessica. Jessica was a year younger than Denise. For the most part he and his sister-in-law got along fine. They smiled, played the part of happy in-laws, though Conrad always sensed that Jessica was jealous Denise had gotten Conrad instead of her. Not that Jessica really wanted him, but rather the honor that came with being a Hunter’s wife. Jessica was a flirt, she dated a lot, and almost every weekend she went out to the clubs and hooked up with some random guy. She had once modeled when she was a teenager and now worked as a legal aid in the city. She had a small sexy face, large dry lips, and when she wore her mini-skirts her gray legs were flawless. Back in Artemis, had Conrad not have been so shy, Jessica would have no doubt been the first girl he would have chased. Even at the bar, standing in the shadows, he’d had his eye on her, because there was something sexy about Jessica, something almost forbidden. But Denise had been the one who approached him, the one who he had fallen for, and he loved his wife more than anything in the world.

  But the party ended and he was drunk and it was just the two of them there on the couch. They started talking, Jessica telling him about what it was like growing up with Denise, how she always felt she had to exist up to the bar her sister had set, how even though her parents always denied it Jessica could tell they favored Denise more. How no matter how well she did in school, how many extracurricular activities she went out for, Denise somehow always one-upped her. And the entire time Jessica started inching closer and closer to Conrad, and before he knew it her hand was on his leg and she was leaning in and they were kissing. And though something in Conrad’s dead mind told him to stop he continued kissing her back, feeling her dead tongue dart into his mouth, pushing his dead tongue into her mouth, and when she started undoing his belt and whispered into his ear, Let’s see just how big that broadsword of yours really is, Conrad pushed her away and stood up. He looked around the existing room like he had never seen it before—the TV, stereo, chairs, fireplace all foreign objects—and when he looked at Jessica there on the couch, pouting her large dry lips, he realized his terrible mistake and turned and hurried out of the room.

  He had meant to tell Denise about it the next morning, before Jessica had a chance, but the opportunity never presented itself. He waited until the next day but again the opportunity just wasn’t there, and every day that passed he kept telling himself he would tell her tomorrow, until those tomorrows turned into weeks, those weeks turned into months, those months into years (again, carving those three words did nothing to relieve his guilt), and then Kyle was almost ten and Conrad had hesitated in killing a zombie and now he was being transferred to some other job, a job so top secret even the Government would deny its existence.

  As far as he knew, Jessica never told Denise. The subject of their almost-tryst never came up between Conrad and his sister-in-law. But it was always there, right beneath the surface, and as the days and weeks and months and years passed, they both became colder to one another, until it got to the point neither of them could stand to be in the same room for more than a minute before the insults started to fly.

  Staring now at the metal door, thinking about what was carved on the other side, Conrad wished again he could tell his wife everything, he wished he could confess. But he knew keeping the truth from Denise was for the best. After all, this was how things worked, how the world turned, people lying to protect one another.

  Turning away from the metal door, he walked past the rest of the dust-covered boxes and files. He went up the stairs into the basement, turned the corner and ran right into someone coming his way.

  He grunted in surprise, dropping the box. The man he’d just run into quickly bent and grabbed the box, offered it back to Conrad with a lowered head and a murmured apologize.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Conrad said. He took the box, started to step around the man, but paused. “What are you doing down here anyway?”

  “Rats,” the man murmured. His head was still lowered.

  Conrad remembered seeing some droppings in the subbasement. “Where’s Jerry?”

  Jerry was their usual weekday janitor.

  “He’s sick,” the man murmured. He raised his head just a little, enough for Conrad to see his thick glasses and beard. “I’m covering. Sorry again for running into you.”

  “Let me see your ID.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your ID. Let me see it.”

  The man didn’t move for the longest time, just frowning at him. Finally he reached into his pocket and extracted his identification and handed it to Conrad.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  The name on the ID was Joseph Cook. Conrad held it up and compared the picture with the janitor’s face. After the attempt on his existence the other day, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  “No problem.” Conrad handed the ID back. “Just get all of those rats expired, okay?”

  • • •

  He started with his locker first, took down the pictures of Denise and Kyle. Next he went up to his office on the third floor. Here he cleaned out his desk, but there wasn’t much except a few more pictures of his family. Truth be told, that was all he really wanted to take with him. Not his commendations, not his medals, not his awards, not even his personalized letter from the Leader thanking him for his service—he placed these in the box as well, but he had no intention of keeping them, figured he would throw them away once he got to wherever he was going.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Norman said, “Have everything?”

  Conrad nodded. A moment later, the box now under his arm, he stepped out into the hallway, shut the door behind him. Keeping his voice low, he asked, “Philip know yet this will be his new office?”

  Norman nodded. “He was told yesterday. He’s very excited.”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  Down the hallway came the faint sound of a television, some loud laughter. Both men looked down that way.

  “Last chance,” Norman said. “Philip’s out on patrol, so you won’t be forced to see him.”

  The room farther down the hallway was called the Deck, a play on the baseball term. It was where the Hunters on duty spent most of their time while waiting for the all-important call, lounging around, lifting weights, playing cards, video games, billiards, joking, napping. They spent most of the day doing this while two other squads drove around the city in black Humvees (vehicles exclusive to Hunters), making sure their presence was known, and come nighttime almost all of them would leave, squads driving around not only the city but also the surrounding suburbs, because it was at night when the zombies almost always appeared.

  The Deck was the place Conrad had wanted to avoid today.

  “And what do you expect me to say to them?”

  “I don’t know. But you worked with most of them for nearly a decade. The least you can do is say goodbye.”

  “They think I’m afraid of zombies now. Did you know that?”

  Norman was silent.

  “Frank stopped me when I first got here this morning. He said he’d heard the news, wanted to wish me luck. He said it was an honor to serve under me and that he didn’t believe what everyone else was saying.”

  “Frank’s a good rookie,” Norman said. Down the hallway, more laughter came from the Deck. “I’d say he’s one of our best recruits.”

  Conrad barely heard him. He thought about what Frank had then told him, about what everyone else was saying, and repeated once more how he didn’t believe it. Frank, a kid barely twenty years old, a newlywed, one of the few Hunters nowadays that truly believed in honor and integrity and professionalism. Conrad thought about how Frank had then saluted him—his feet together, his back straight, his flattened han
d held to his forehead—and how he continued standing there, staring back at Conrad, a statue that would not move until he was dismissed.

  Some more laughter exploded from the room, and someone shouted: “I’m telling you the truth, she ate the whole fucking thing!”

  Conrad shifted the box to his other side, looked at Norman, and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  • • •

  They took Norman’s car. Out of the parking garage and into the city streets, over the bridge and onto the Shakespeare, neither of them spoke. Eventually Norman got off at an exit near the country, made a right at the top of the ramp, and drove for another ten minutes.

  They passed homes, farms, dead cows and sheep grazing in fields, countless telephone poles supporting their burdens of black wire upon black wire. Eventually they turned off the main road onto a narrow, poorly maintained side road that was sheltered by tall gray trees. What little sunlight there had been fighting through the heavy clouds was shut out by the thick leaves and branches.

  A half mile on this side road brought them to an extended gate. It seemed to be the only thing around besides the trees.

  Two men appeared out of the trees. Both wore gray and black camouflage. Both carried rifles. They checked out the car with some kind of sensor, reviewed Conrad’s and Norman’s Hunter badges, then allowed them to continue.

  After another quarter mile the trees started to thin and they passed a large white building. It was about three hundred yards long, maybe one hundred yards tall, with no windows of any kind. It had a small parking lot dotted with a few cars and vans.

  Conrad expected Norman to pull in there, but when he didn’t and they continued on and the place was lost behind the shield of gray trees, he asked what that was.