Land of the Dead

by Robert Swartwood

  Into his ear Kyle whispered, “You were fighting at Heaven, right? Right?”

  Conrad watched the people watching them. “That’s right, buddy.”

  “So it’s over now? All the living—they’re dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And now it’s no big deal you’re a Hunter, right?”

  “Well,” Conrad said, but before he could say anything else, the door opened and Denise poked her head out.

  “Kyle, are you ready for your last present?”

  Kyle moved away from his father and turned to his mother. He nodded quickly.

  “Then go back to your seat and close your eyes. No peeking.”

  Kyle did this without a word, passing his friends and their parents, all who were still sneaking glances at Conrad. Thomas was still smiling at him, and Conrad mentally prepared himself for the assault of questions his neighbor would ask later.

  Once Kyle was seated, once he had his eyes closed, Denise stepped back inside and came out a moment later with the puppy in her arms. It had a gray bow on its collar and kept squirming around, trying to get down. Conrad worried the puppy would bark and spoil the surprise, but the dog remained quiet, the only thing giving it away some of the kids gasping and saying oh wow, that’s so cool.

  Kyle kept his eyes closed just as his mother had told him, though he was smiling now. He knew what this last present would be—hadn’t he been asking for a dog for months now?—but still he played along, did everything that was asked of him, until Denise finally made it to the table, set the puppy down on the discarded wrapping paper and boxes, and said, “Okay, Kyle, now you can open them.”

  But before Kyle could, the puppy barked. Then Kyle’s eyes were opened, he was smiling even more, and he said, “Yes! This is awesome!”

  Denise stepped back, a camera now in her hands. She had already taken three snapshots when Kyle stood up and began making his way toward her.

  “Thanks,” he said, “thank you so much,” and Denise, standing in front of Conrad, opened her arms to embrace her son.

  But Kyle walked right past her. He went straight to his father and once again placed his arms around him, saying thank you thank you thank you, barely even aware when his mother, her face suddenly stolid, quickly turned away.

  • • •

  She’d locked herself in their bedroom bathroom, and no matter how many times Conrad asked her nicely, she refused to open up.

  “Go away.”

  “Come on, Denise. This is stupid. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course you’d say that.”

  “Stop being silly. You’re overreacting.”

  At once the door swung open and there stood his wife, her face set, a crumpled tissue in her hand that was not spotted with tears but rather with dead flesh.

  “Don’t say that to me. Don’t you dare say that to me.”

  He stood there, only a few feet away, wanting to reach out to her, hold her, but knowing he shouldn’t move an inch.

  “What do you do for this family?” she said. “Besides working, besides providing, what do you do?”

  “Listen, I know you think you’ve been slighted—”

  “You don’t know what I think. You always want to be the man in charge, our protector. You always want to tell us what it is we think. But do you want to know the truth? You don’t know anything.”

  She had started toward him, her finger raised, but now dropped it. She turned away and walked over to the bed. The bedsprings squeaked as she sat down on the edge.

  “Then again,” she said, her voice now soft, “I don’t know anything either. I never know anything about you. About what you’re doing. You have this new promotion ... but what is it?”

  “You know I can’t—”

  “Let me finish.” She stared at him, her gaze at first soft, then hard, and slowly shook her head. “I know about them.”

  “What?”

  “Those men watching Kyle. Thomas brought them to my attention yesterday. He said they were following our son. So I called the police. You weren’t here to talk to about it, so I had no choice. And do you know what happened? Instead of the police coming, one of the men got out of the car and came up to the house. He introduced himself and asked me what the problem was. I told him the problem was he was following my son. And do you know what he said? Can you even guess?”

  Conrad was silent.

  “He said you—you, Conrad—had set this all up. That they were ordered to monitor our son to keep him safe. Keep him safe from what, I asked, and the man said, from becoming a zombie.” Shaking her head again, she stared up at him and said, “I don’t get it. Why would you ... how could you possibly think our son would become a zombie?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No it isn’t. It’s very simple.”

  A knock sounded at the closed bedroom door, and a voice said, “Mom? Dad? What’s going on?”

  “Look,” Denise said. “Your son is calling you.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Dad, I need you to come outside with me.”

  “Well? Go with him, Conrad. You’re his favorite parent.”

  “What were you going to say before? What’s very simple?”

  “Dad?”

  “Those men,” Denise said. “I want them gone. Kyle doesn’t need them. He’s a good boy. He ... he won’t become a zombie.”

  “Dad, can you hear me?”

  “Do you want to know the truly awful thing? Having those men watch our son just proves that you don’t trust him. And not telling me? Well, that just proves you don’t trust me either. So let me ask you. Who do you trust?”

  Conrad continued staring at Denise. Like so many times before, he wanted to tell her everything. Even if it meant breaking his promise to Norman, breaking the Hunter Code, he wanted to let her in on all his secrets. He even opened his mouth, meaning to say these things, when Kyle knocked even harder—“Dad, come on!”—and Conrad turned away, went to the door, and opened it.

  Kyle, his cone-shaped hat still on his head, reached for him immediately. He grabbed his father’s hand, told him to come along, and then Conrad was being led away, down the stairs, through the hallway into the kitchen, through the kitchen and out the door onto the deck.

  And there everyone was, the same children and adults, all standing on the lawn, leaving the deck completely empty except for the two of them. Only Conrad quickly realized there were more people than before, maybe fifty or sixty more, and at once he understood what had happened, he remembered what Kyle had asked him earlier, but before he could say anything or head back into the house, Kyle shouted:

  “This is my dad! He’s the greatest Hunter in the world!”

  The crowd began applauding at once. They clapped, they cheered, they stomped their feet. And they kept applauding, until the claps and stomps and cheers died away and the chant started up, everyone chanting speech ... speech ... speech.

  27

  For the past two days it had been raining off and on, storm clouds invading the sky for an hour at a time and then moving away or dissipating altogether. They’d been lucky last night, having only put up with what the rain had left behind, the muddy parks and fields, but it looked like tonight they would have to face the rain head on. A heavy layer of clouds had coated the sky, blocking out the stars and moon, and off in the distance, past the expressway, they could hear the irregular rumble of thunder.

  Tonight they were going through the area around the Shakespeare, working their way through overgrown bushes and trees and grass. Only a handful of bold insects played their dead songs, the rest having decided to wait out the impending storm.

  Last night they’d been following James, which meant tonight they were with Ruth. That small, quiet zombie with the long hair pulled back into a bun, hiding beneath her hat. She moved cautiously through the trees and bushes, as if snapping a twig or tearing off a leaf would cause irrevocable damage to the ecosystem. Even when she moved through the tall grass s
he did so slowly and purposefully, pushing the swaying gray strands away with a gentleness Conrad had never thought a zombie could possess.

  It was half past midnight and they weren’t doing very well. Two hours now they’d been out and about, first over by one of the parks in the city, then coming here, and so far Ruth had found no Pandoras.

  This was something Dr. Hennessey had spoken to the Trackers about yesterday. How all the zombies at Living Intelligence knew about what had taken place at Heaven, and that for the next several days or even weeks, the zombies would go through stages of remorse, sadness, betrayal, before finally acceptance and, quite possibly, denial.

  Only Albert and Gabriel knew that Conrad had actually been there, that he had participated in the slaughter, and he was thankful when nobody approached him to give details of what it was like. Conrad was still waiting to be called into Albert’s office, chewed out for how he’d treated the zombie, but nothing had come of it. Albert had in fact pulled him aside, but it was only to thank him for going along with Gabriel’s request, and to ask if Conrad was certain he still wanted to drop the detail on Kyle.

  “Damn, I hope it doesn’t rain.” Scott’s voice came through the earpiece in Conrad’s left ear. “It’s bad enough walking in this shit, but rain just makes it worse.”

  “I hear you,” Brooks said.

  Garry said, “I hate the rain, too. I wish it would never rain again.”

  The Shakespeare was less than a half mile away, and the sporadic rush of traffic was faint. It was so faint, in fact, that they had no trouble at all hearing the oncoming thunder sounding from the east.

  “Maybe we should call it a night,” Brooks said. “What do you say, Scott?”

  “You know we can’t.”

  “But we’re wasting our time.”

  By this point in the evening they usual had one, maybe two Pandoras. The same thing had happened last night. James, who always found the average, had led them to no Pandoras. It was clear his heart, his mind, even his soul, hadn’t been in the task. Now Ruth was exhibiting the same traits: walking aimlessly, slowly, her head dropped and her shoulders slouched. She’d taken off one of her gloves and held her hand out as she moved, grazing the bottom of her palm over the tips of the grass.

  “Just give her time,” Scott said. “She’ll come through.”

  They continued on, Scott and Brooks walking ahead of Ruth, Conrad and Garry following behind. The thunder was getting even closer.

  “Look at this,” Brooks said, “she’s slowing down.”

  Up ahead, Ruth had taken her hand away from the tips of grass. She paused, leaned forward, stayed that way for a moment, then kneeled down.

  “You think she’s got one?” Garry asked.

  Scott said, “We’ll see.”

  As Ruth inspected whatever it was up ahead, Conrad thought about the past couple days. About what had happened after he’d left Kyle’s party. How he couldn’t take it, all those people cheering him on, demanding a speech, and how he’d just walked away, gotten into his car, and driven to the Living Intelligence facility. Many times he started to phone the house but hung up before the call could go through. More than once he drafted an email before deleting it. He just didn’t know what to say to his wife and son, how to explain, and by the time he approached Albert about dropping the detail he had convinced himself he had done it all for selfish reasons.

  Destroying Heaven apparently didn’t do the trick that many people had believed it would. The rest of the living in the world did not just die away. Apparently neither did the Pandoras. Or maybe that wasn’t the case either; maybe the Pandoras were dying away, the energy inside those crystal-like cubes dissipating, and that was the reason for the past two nights the tracking zombies could find none.

  Ruth stood back up. She was holding something in her ungloved hand.

  Scott said, “Anybody see what she’s got?”

  Ruth stayed where she was, just standing there and holding what she’d found on the ground in the palm of her hand. To Conrad it appeared as if she was talking to it.

  “Should we go in?” Garry asked.

  Scott said, “We might as well.”

  All four of them converged on the spot where Ruth stood. In the distance, an even louder peal of thunder sounded out.

  It didn’t take long for them to get close enough to hear that Ruth was indeed talking. Whatever it was in her hand, she was whispering to it, cooing to it like a mother to its child—something that took Conrad back to the grocery store the other day, to Denise in the produce section cooing to that dead infant, and for the first time in a long while he thought about the coming twins, how now he was not just responsible for two existences, but four.

  “What is that?” Scott asked.

  With the help of the night vision glasses each of them could see exactly what Ruth now held in the palm of her hand. It was a toad. Tiny, the size of a baby, but that wasn’t the strange part.

  The strange part was the toad was living.

  At once Ruth stopped cooing to the toad, which just rested there in her palm, completely motionless except for its throat going big and small, big and small. She spoke in a hushed whisper.

  “I never stepped foot inside Heaven, not like Gabriel. But do you know what he once told me about it?”

  “Wait,” Conrad said. “Gabriel’s been inside Heaven?”

  Ruth ignored him. “He said that some of the animals they brought in from the outside started out dead, but that by being in constant contact with the rest of them, the rest of the living, the animals just ... they started to turn on their own.”

  Scott said, “How can that thing possibly be alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth whispered. She held the toad close to her face, made kissing sounds at it. “Do you want me to ask it?”

  “Give it here,” Brooks said. “We have to destroy it.”

  Ruth placed her other hand over the toad and snatched both hands to her chest. “You most certainly will not.”

  “Ruth,” Scott said, “answer me. How is that thing alive?”

  “It wasn’t a few minutes ago. I spotted it on the ground, trying to jump away, and I picked it up. Then—it was so strange—it just started to turn. Right there in the palm of my hand.” She peeked inside her cupped hands. “How are you feeling, little baby toad? Do you like being alive?”

  Brooks shook his head. “This is insane.”

  Garry said, “We really do need to destroy it. Either that or take it back to LI and have it tested.”

  “You’re not cutting him apart,” Ruth said, once more holding her cupped hands close to her chest. “After all the living that have just died, why must you also murder this helpless, defenseless animal?”

  Before any of them could respond, Scott turned away and held a hand to his ear—which meant someone at Living Intelligence had just hailed him. He stood there for a few seconds, not saying anything, and when he turned back around his black dead gaze fell on Conrad.

  “What is it?” Conrad said.

  “It’s your wife.”

  Conrad took an unconscious step forward. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. It’s dispatch. They have her on hold. They say she called asking for you, hysterical.”

  “Transfer it.”

  Scott stared at him.

  “What are you waiting for?” Conrad said, taking out his own earpiece. “Transfer it.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “But something could be wrong. Something is wrong.”

  Brooks said, “Scott, just let him take the call.”

  “Yeah,” Garry said. “What harm can it do?”

  Scott still looked apprehensive, standing there with his hand to his ear.

  Ruth was watching Conrad too. She saw the expression on his face, what for a dead person appeared as worry. She sighed.

  “Transfer it, Scott.”

  He looked at her.

  “If you want to take the toad, fine. But at least l
et him speak to his wife if it’s such an emergency.”

  The promise of receiving the living toad without any fuss was incentive enough for Scott. He pulled his earpiece out and handed it to Conrad.

  Conrad took it, placed in his ear, immediately said, “Denise?”

  The operator said, “One moment, please.”

  The moment passed, enough for another peal of oncoming thunder, and then it was Denise he heard, his wife sobbing and saying hello, hello, hello?

  “Denise,” he said again, and his wife stopped saying hello, started sobbing even harder. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  More thunder, almost on top of them this time, and as if on cue the clouds opened up, the patter of rain coming down on their heads.

  “It’s Kyle,” Denise said, and just like Scott had told him, she was hysterical. “He—he’s gone. Oh Conrad, our boy is gone.”

  28

  It was starting to rain harder by the time they got off the Shakespeare. Garry drove the SUV, Scott in the front seat, Conrad, Brooks, and Ruth in the back.

  “Do you understand me?” Conrad said. “Does that all make sense?”

  Ruth nodded.

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  “Only if I can have my toad back.”

  In the front passenger seat, Scott shook his head. “Absolutely not. All of this is against protocol anyway.”

  “Oh stuff it, Scott,” Brooks said. “If this was your kid, you’d be doing the same thing.”

  The SUV’s wipers were working furiously to keep the windshield clear. Garry was hunched in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel, expertly swerving around slower vehicles. Every time they came to an intersection he’d call back to Conrad, who would tell him to either go straight or make a turn.

  Ruth was watching Conrad, her eyebrows raised. “Well?”

  “Scott?” he said loudly.

  “I don’t care who your father was, Conrad, I’m not making deals with a zombie.”

  “You piece of shit,” Brooks said. He unclipped his seatbelt and moved forward to grab Scott’s shoulder. “Give her the fucking toad.”