“Well I still do,” she said.
“Good,” Edward said. “That makes one of us.”
* * *
Cory, Luke, and Jojo were so engrossed in the bizarre powwow happening down the road from them that none of them noticed as Larissa backed away from the group and ducked out of sight behind a telephone pole off the highway. It was a terrible hiding place, but it wasn’t like she needed them not to see her. She just needed them to not see the phone she pulled out of her pocket. None of the others in the group had been able to get a signal out here, but Larissa’s phone was different. It ran on the same principles as the one that crazy old man kept, but Larissa’s had been given to her for completely different reasons.
She pushed a button. She didn’t need to do anything else, since the phone could only call one number.
“He’s here,” Larissa whispered into it. “And it’s a situation, uh, crap I can’t remember. Um, C? Yeah, situation C. No, I’m positive. Yes, that one. Okay. Don’t worry, I’ll do exactly like you told me. I’ll see you soon, Dr. Chella.”
Chapter Thirty Eight
Rae nervously fingered Spanky’s trigger. Edward was quite a sight, standing before her in ruined and blood-darkened clothing with his own personal army behind him. Everything she had done over the last several weeks had been due to the idea that an innocent man had been caught in circumstances beyond his control. He had plenty of control now, but he no longer seemed so innocent.
Ghostly memories of her parents screamed in her head, telling her to shoot him. He looked more human now than ever, but on the inside he might have gone in the opposite direction. This was not something her parents would have wanted to live.
In her own mind, however, Edward still was not a something. He was a someone. Whatever he had gone through and seen since he had left Wisconsin, she refused to believe it could possibly be enough to completely get rid of that scared yet determined man she’d first met.
She lowered Spanky, and his muscles visibly relaxed. There had been some sort of unspoken standoff here, but she wasn’t sure which of them had won.
“I suppose we should do this, then” Rae said. “The old man has been waiting for you. From what my lieutenant said, he’s probably even expecting you right now.”
Edward raised an eyebrow. “Your lieutenant? Since when do you have a lieutenant at Merton?”
“I don’t have one at Merton, I have one here. I told you, it’s been an interesting few weeks.”
“Why don’t you fill me in on our way to…I’m guessing this man is waiting for me at 210 North Elida Street?”
“That’s the place,” Rae said. “But, um, should you do something with…you know, them first?” She pointed back at the horde behind them.
“Do your people have ways of keeping them away without hurting them?” Edward asked.
“Low-level shock prods with every one of our vehicles, a few nets for larger groups. Don’t worry, I won’t let any of my people hurt your, um, I guess those would be your people.”
“I’ll do my best to return the favor, but mine don’t take orders too well.” His body tensed for a second, making Rae think something was wrong, until all the zombies dispersed in different directions. Not a one of them came toward Rae’s group.
“Okay, how the flying fuck did you just do that?” Rae asked.
“I smelled nice at them.”
Rae couldn’t tell if he was trying to be sarcastic or if that was really what he had done, but she didn’t think she really wanted to know.
She motioned for him to follow her, and they went back to the rest of her group. “Edward, go ahead and meet Neuman Security.”
Edward nodded at them. “Hello. Is this your whole group?”
“Unless you count the old man, then yeah. But he’s not exactly part of the team. He’s really more like our employer.”
Luke snorted. “Except he’s not paying us anything.”
Rae rolled her eyes. “He’s paid us in equipment, and damned good equipment considering what little else there is to find out here. Edward, that’s Jojo, Luke, Cory and…” She looked around. “Now where the hell did Larissa go this time?”
Larissa ran up them from off on the side of the road. “Sorry, had to go find a nice private bush.”
“And Larissa,” Rae finished. “Everyone, this is him. This is Edward Schuett.”
They all nodded or gave half-hearted waves, but Rae could see a little bit of fear in all their eyes. She would have reassured them, but she still wasn’t quite sure there was nothing to fear.
“Okay everyone, back to your regular patrols,” Rae said. “Keep an eye out for all our, uh, new arrivals. You know the drill with them. Cory, you continue coordinating everything and let me know by the walkies if there’s anything important. I’m going with Edward into town to see the old man.”
“Good luck,” Cory said. “You know, sometimes I’d rather hang out with the zeds than with that guy. He’s just plain not all there anymore, if you ask me.”
“Not to mention the zeds’ moans are easier to understand than anything that comes out of his mouth,” Luke said. They all got on their ATVs with Cory and Luke sharing one. Rae motioned for Edward to come with her to the car.
“Neuman Security, huh?” Edward asked.
“Yeah. After you were taken away, I started poking my nose in where it didn’t belong about the whole thing. I even thought I could find something somewhere about your daughter…”
“You wouldn’t,” Edward said. His voice was low with dark undertones, and Rae didn’t ask him to elaborate.
“Uh, when I did find enough to go to the press I was very sneaky about it, but as soon as my interview aired Merton tried to come down on me hard. Apparently the CRS had told them to make sure everything stayed quiet, and they wanted a little revenge for me making them look like fools.”
They got in the car, and Rae turned it around to head back into Winnebago. In many places the streets were broken up enough to be completely useless, but Rae had already explored the town enough to know exactly the quickest way to the old man’s place.
“Why did you do the interview, anyway?” Edward asked.
“Because I saw something with you I’d never seen before. A zombie who was actually more human than most humans. I hated the idea that you would be out there and no one would know or care what was happening to you.”
“And how have people actually reacted to it?” Edward asked. “It isn’t like I’ve been able to keep up on popular opinion much in the last week.”
Rae shrugged. “Most people think it’s all a scam. I mean, it wasn’t like the show I was on is exactly considered reliable, but there are enough people that take it seriously. Some think you should be destroyed if you’re ever found. Some think you should have all the same rights as any other human.”
“You say ‘other human’ as though I am one,” Edward said.
“You are, though,” she responded. Edward responded only by staring silently out the window as the car carefully crept over the potholed streets.
“Anyway,” Rae continued, “I’d already lost my job and tossed out my boyfriend by that point, so they sent some people to beat the shit of me.”
“Bastards,” Edward said.
“Oh, don’t worry. They didn’t get a chance to lay a hand on me. The sons of bitches sent Johnny, my ex, with a couple of other thugs, but he froze at just the right moment. He just couldn’t do it. I, on the other hand, had no problem with kicking his ass. Especially since the first thing they tried to do was take Spanky away from me. Nobody ever fucking touches my gun.
“By then I’d been thinking about trying to do some sort of private security gig myself, and I’d already convinced Larissa and Cory to join up with me. Cory got his boyfriend Luke to come along, and Luke convinced Jojo. But we wouldn’t have actually been able to start up if it hadn’t been for the old man.”
“Tell me about him,” Edward said. “So far the only thing I know about him is
he’s old.”
“Then you know almost as much as the rest of us,” Rae said. “I don’t even know his name. The first time I saw him was right after the CRS took you. He asked what was going on and I told him, even though that CRS bitch had just told me not to. I didn’t think anything more of that until I started trying to find a picture to prove that you’d been in Fond du Lac. He came to me, said he’d heard I was looking into you. I asked him how, and he said Merton was keeping tabs on me about it, and he was keeping tabs on Merton. He’s been keeping tabs on a lot of people, apparently. Whoever the hell this guy is, he seems to have friends in an insane number of high places.”
“And why does he want to see me?” Edward asked.
“My first guess would be because everyone wants to see you, but he claims he knows things even the CRS doesn’t. He hasn’t been able to prove that to me yet, but he knew to come up to Fond du Lac to find you all the way from here, and he’s got access to equipment that no ordinary hermit can just find on the street. You’ll see what I mean when we get there.”
“So Winnebago is his home?”
“I guess. Not much of a home. This is one of those towns that didn’t have enough strategic value for anyone to try defending during the first days of the Uprising, and it was too close to the first reported cases. So it got left on its own. It’s not exactly the kind of place where you would expect to find a guy like this.”
The car finally turned onto Elida Street, which was one of the few streets around here still marked by a rusting and bent street sign. Most of the buildings around here were too broken up to be lived in, some of them even collapsing in on themselves, but one still looked like it was maintained with some regularity. The sign out front indicated that at one time this had been the Winnebago Public Library.
“This is it,” Rae said. “Final stop.”
She didn’t even bother to pull the car over. Some of the potholes along the curb were deep enough that she might not be able to get the car out of them again, and it wasn’t like anyone else would be coming along to use the street anyway. Edward got out slowly, staring at the building as though it were something to truly behold.
“Edward, are you okay?” Rae asked.
“Yes, I suppose. It’s just…never mind. I want to finally do this.”
Rae led him up to the front door. The glass doors had been smashed long ago and covered up in plywood that was at least slightly less rotten than on other buildings. She opened the door and motioned for Edward to go in ahead of her. She followed and waited for him to take in the sight.
It was still possible to tell that the building had once been a library, but that was mostly because of the books stacked as high as her shoulders in teetering towers of yellowing pages. While some shelves still remained intact, the books had all been removed from them and set to one side so the old man could use the shelves to store the incredible number of folders he’d accumulated over the years. A couple days ago when the old man hadn’t been looking she’d pulled out one of the folders to look at the contents, but it was full of handwritten notes in a sloppy hand she couldn’t read and equations and formulas she didn’t understand. The other shelves had been dismantled and put back together as work tables, and all across the tables there were microscopes, test tubes, small refrigerators, Bunsen burners, needles, and various tools that Rae couldn’t name. And huddled among them all on a stool, fidgeting excitedly as he watched Edward come in, was the old man.
“Are you him?” the old man asked.
“I guess, unless you were expecting some other Z7,” Edward said.
The old man jumped off his stool. That was pretty impressive, considering he had to be well over eighty years old by now. “Really? There’s more?”
“Um, no. I was being sarcastic,” Edward said. “How exactly would you not know I’m the only Z7? You’re the one that made me.”
The old man looked puzzled. “I did?”
“You said you did,” Edward said. “When you called. You said you were the man who created me.”
“Oh, yes, well when you put it like that then I guess I did have something to do with creating a Z7, but that’s not what I really meant.”
“Then could you please finally explain it to me?”
“Yes, yes, I’m so sorry. This should call for a proper introduction. Edward Schuett, my name is Dr. Brendan Bloss and I am the man who created the Animator Virus.”
Chapter Thirty Nine
For several seconds the old library was exactly the way it had always been intended—completely quiet. Edward stood there with Rae beside him, but he had no clue what to say and Rae’s mouth hung open in shock. Dr. Bloss watched them both with what might have been amusement on his face, but it was hard to tell through his bushy beard. Finally one of them made a sound, but Edward didn’t realize what it was at first. A clicking noise came from Rae. When Edward looked over at her he realized she had just turned off the safety on Spanky.
“That’s a load of horseshit,” Rae said.
“It’s not,” Dr. Bloss said. “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m senile enough to make random things up for no apparent reason.”
“There’s no way that could be true,” she said. “One man could never have done that.”
“One man didn’t,” Dr. Bloss said. “I was part of a team.”
“That was fifty years ago. If someone was actually responsible for it, they would be dead by now.”
“Really? ‘If someone was responsible for it?’ Did you honestly think no one was responsible? A single virus wiped out three-quarters of the human race in a completely unnatural way. Something like that doesn’t just happen at random in nature. Well, it does sometimes, actually. Maybe I’m not making my point right.”
“You did all this,” Edward said. He was surprised at just how calm and even his voice sounded. “You nearly destroyed all of humanity.”
“You make it sound like I would have done something like that on purpose. I didn’t.”
“Yet you admit to it,” Rae said. Edward noticed that her grip on Spanky had grown tighter. “Why would you tell anyone that you murdered the world?”
“Please don’t be dramatic. I told you we didn’t do it on purpose. But it’s not something I’d like to take to my grave. I’ve come to grips with the part I played in all this, and I need to make it right, if such a thing could ever be said to be right again. That’s why I’ve been seeking you out so desperately, Mr. Schuett. You are now the key.”
Edward looked to Rae. “Put the gun down.”
“It’s not up.”
“I can see it, Rae. It’s slowly going up to point at his head. Put it down. For now.”
It was the last two words that seemed to convince her. She lowered the rifle but didn’t put the safety back on. Edward was okay with that. Rage and anger at this man were only two of the roiling emotions in his head that he couldn’t possibly map at the moment. If what he said was true, then on some level he was responsible for the deaths of Julia and Dana, even Liddie. Edward knew it was ridiculous, putting the blame for the deaths of three random people on this fragile old man when the blood of millions more was ignored, but that was all it came down to for Edward right now. These next few minutes were the doctor’s chance to make amends, at least to Edward. Whether or not Rae would follow that reasoning was up to her, but for now Dr. Bloss could make his case.
“Explain,” Edward said to him. “Everything. Start at the beginning.”
“The beginning,” Dr. Bloss said. “Let’s see, where’s the beginning?” He actually turned around in place as though he were looking for it. “Oh! I suppose that would be Project: Queen.”
He paused, looking at them both as though that explained everything. Rae made a hurry-up motion with her hand. “Which is?” she prodded impatiently.
“I guess you could call it a sort of bio-weapons program. For the government. That’s how it all started out. Isn’t that how things always start out? Yes, something like that.�
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“Those sons-of-bitches,” Rae said. “You can’t trust them now, so I guess you couldn’t trust them then.”
“Wait,” Edward said. “The government created a zombie virus as a biological weapon? How did they actually expect to control it?”
“They didn’t, because that is not what they were trying to do. I was part of project designed to add enhancements to certain soldiers. It was supposed to be a new way of communicating in combat, a method that could not be intercepted or hacked by enemies and could silently allow complex groups to coordinate their maneuvers. The basic idea started with how certain lower species communicate, and we were trying to find a way to get a similar effect in humans.”
“Pheromones,” Edward said. “It was never supposed to be about raising the dead, but about giving people a way to communicate through pheromones. Is that right?”
“Oh yes, very good. You’re correct, after a fashion. What we came up with was actually far more complicated than that, but the idea was similar.”
“I’m not sure I’m following that,” Rae said. “If these fair-o things were just about communicating, how did we end up with zeds?”
“The reanimated were a completely unexpected byproduct of something else we were trying to do with the project. We wanted to give soldiers these abilities, but we were having trouble doing it with any speed. We’d thought we had figured out how to manipulate DNA to the necessary glands and sensory organs, but the process was very slow and very painful. One of my colleagues thought he could speed up the process and essentially get the pain over with in one quick moment. He’s the one that made it into a virus. I assure you, the rest of us would have stopped him if we had known. I spent years trying to figure out the exact nature of it. What I concluded is that there was a flaw in the virus’s structure. It caused the new growth, but that growth was unstable and it tried to break down. Essential parts of the rest of the body would slow down almost to a stop to redirect all their energy into the new growth, which never quite finished and therefore never stopped. In attempting to heal the new growths, other parts of the body would try to heal rapidly too, at least to a point. That is why the reanimated appear dead yet don’t decay beyond a certain point.”
The Reanimation of Edward Schuett Page 26
