by Guy James
7
PARKING LOT, COCA-COLA BOTTLING FACILITY, HAWTHORNE, NEW YORK
Milt did not steel himself against the cold as he walked away from the bottling plant. Instead, he embraced it. It could have been more humid, of course, and Milt would have preferred it that way, but he decided that there was time for that still. He was certain that humidity was coming—whether in the form of snow, hail, or otherwise—he could feel it in his modified, semi-zombie bones.
The trees surrounding the parking lot were bare of leaves, and their scraggly branches seemed to be reaching down toward the cars, as if they wanted to scrape at the metal and plastic.
“You shall have your chance at last, dear trees, for you have stood in the background far too long. You shall inherit not only their cars, but their homes, and all of that which they have taken from you. You shall have it all back. The time of reclamation is nigh.” Milt snickered. “Nigh indeed.” He let his gaze drift into the woods that bordered the parking lot. “Dear trees,” he whispered, “dear, innocent trees.”
The rust-pocked van was parked at the far end of the lot, apart from the other vehicles. Though it stood firmly on all four wheels, the van had the look of a vehicle that was about to fall over on its side, as if it were a cardboard cutout of a van and not a real van at all.
Milt eyed it curiously, once again appreciating how fitting it was that his mode of transport looked as it did. The sight of the van’s hull always made Milt think of his own skin, and as he approached the van he brushed his cheek with the back of his hand, then probed the skin of his cheek with his thumb and forefinger, searching for a bloated pimple to pop. He found no pimples ripe enough to deserve to be called bloated, but he did find a pimple of unfortunate shallowness.
“One must make do with what one is given.”
Milt grabbed at the zit with his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed and rolled his fingers over it, expertly trying to tease out the prized contents of his clogged sebaceous glands. “The undeveloped ones are so extraordinarily tricky. I must not force it in deeper, I must not…”
Growing frustrated at his lack of success in extracting the pimple’s pus, Milt resolved to redouble his overeating efforts and once again immerse himself in the world of Snickers, but even as he made that promise to himself, he knew that the promise was a half-hearted one. His hunger for sugar and fatty treats simply wasn’t what it had once been.
Milt ended his pursuit of the pus eruption.
“Perhaps I must resign myself to a life without pus.” Milt sighed, and his shoulders slumped. “This is an untoward development, but one that I must accept. Not everything in the life of a great hero can go his way. Sacrifices have to be made, and on balance, they are worth making.”
Milt made himself straighten up—as best he could with the canister affixed to his back—and look at the van with pride. Doing what he had just done in the bottling plant, and leaving the scene undiscovered, were milestones in his daring quest. He grinned.
“A quite appropriate journeying apparatus,” Milt mumbled as he trundled the rest of the way to the van. “The events of this world are taking the form that I will them to take. I am the transformer of worlds, the slayer of men, the bringer of the final evolution.”
The world spun around Milt, and for a moment, he felt as if he were back in his comic book shop, seated at the battle station at which he had spent the larger part of his life, fighting epic World of Warcraft battles that were the stuff of legend...among World of Warcraft devotees, anyway.
The world regained its balance and Milt found himself back in the parking lot. After admiring his vehicle for a moment, Milt climbed inside and began to pull the door shut after him. It squealed in protest.
“That’s enough out of you,” Milt said to the door, and pulled it all the way closed. He let go of the handle and the door squealed again, opening a few inches.
“That is quite unacceptable, you see.” He cocked his head to one side and stared at the disobedient car part. “Quite unacceptable.” Milt took the handle of the door firmly in his hand and pulled it shut again. The door stayed in place for a moment, then swung open again.
Fuming now, Milt said, “Do not make me repeat myself, thou misbehaving vehicular appendage. Fasten securely and remain.”
Milt slammed the door shut, and a small piece of rust fell from the van’s undercarriage to the parking lot pavement. Milt started the engine, shifted in his seat so that the canister on his back was flush up against his spine, and put the van in drive.
The beige, windowless van sped away, the driver side door rattling in and out of place as Milt tried to hold it closed while he drove. Pieces of rust fell from the underside of the van as it exited the parking lot, leaving a small and insignificant trail of rust crumbs that was swiftly swept up and away by the chill, winter wind.
8
CITY HALL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
“Alright,” Mallory said. “Thank you. Let’s change gears and talk a little bit about your move to New York City, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” Sven said, “I don’t mind at all.” He was relieved to have the conversation move away from talk of the virus.
“Among the letters you received, there was a letter from a certain politician.” Mallory smiled. “I believe you had never heard of him.”
Sven laughed. “That’s right, I hadn’t.”
Mallory’s smile broadened. “Who was the politician who sent you the letter?”
“It was Harry Melling.”
“Now, before we get into the contents of Mr. Melling’s letter to you, was this the first letter you had received from a politician?”
“No, it wasn’t. There were a lot of letters from politicians…most of them asking the same questions that Mr. Melling was asking…and making the same or similar proposals.”
“Can you tell me what some of the questions were?”
“Sure,” Sven said. “There were three questions, really. It came down to: One, were there signs leading up to the outbreak that could have helped us predict the outbreak? Two, were there steps that could have been taken during the outbreak to save more lives? And three, what countermeasures could governments take both to prevent possible future outbreaks and to reduce loss of life if outbreaks did occur? Predictors, prevention, and mitigation and survival strategies.”
“It sounds like the people who were getting in touch with you thought that another outbreak was a possibility.”
“Absolutely. Some thought that it wasn’t just a possibility, but a certainty, and that it was only a matter of time until another outbreak hit. They wanted me to answer their questions, and to answer them quickly.”
“What did you do?”
“I began to think about a response. Some of the letters hinted at a press conference that we could hold. I talked to Jane and Lorie about all of it, and we came up with some answers, or at least an attempt at some answers.” Sven shrugged. “The press conference…you know how that went.”
Mallory nodded. “It didn’t go as planned.”
“It didn’t. When we were at a distance and unreachable except through the mail, the questions we got were more removed, pragmatic, less personal. But when we got up in front of the reporters and moderators, everyone forgot about outbreak preparedness. They just wanted to know all the details of what we’d gone through. They wanted to hear about the gore. So the press conference had to be ended early, and we all went home. So much for that first attempt.”
“How did you feel about that?”
Sven sighed. “Depressed. I had started to believe that there was some good we could do, that there was something positive somewhere in the horror of it all. After the press conference, I just felt deflated, like everything was pointless, like we had survived and that was it, and that maybe there was nothing more important than personal survival.
“The entrepreneurs who wanted to use us as pinup models to promote their energy bars and weapons and electrified fences drove that point home. T
hey saw us as a way to make money selling their products. To them, we weren’t people who had gone through something terrible. We weren’t people at all. We were just advertising gimmicks, a way to make them richer.
“Even when we were approached to be consultants, the manufacturers never actually wanted to hear what we had to say. They just wanted us to pose next to their products and do sound bytes.”
Sven looked at Mallory and wondered how much of this she would include in her article. He knew that he was being depressing, and he suspected that little of what he was now saying would be included.
As if to confirm what Sven was thinking, Mallory said, “But there were some people who really did want to hear what you had to say, beyond a description of the gruesome events that had taken place.”
“Yes, that’s true. There were definitely some people who wanted to know what had happened, and what good could be learned from it.”
“How did Mr. Melling convince you to come here?”
“I didn’t really need that much convincing. I was worn out on my life in Charlottesville by then. It was just the same thing every day, and I felt like I was going nowhere, living in the shadow of the outbreak. As soon as Jane and Lorie heard about it, they wanted to jump in the car and leave right away. So we did.” Sven shrugged “It helped that Harry was different from the others, too.”
“How do you mean?”
“He seemed genuine, was genuine, it turned out. He spoke to me differently than the others did, like I was still a person, like Jane and Lorie were still people too, and not all some kind of outbreak freaks that could be exploited. It seemed to me that he really wanted to help us.”
“Did you really leave that same day that you talked to Jane and Lorie about it?”
“Yeah, that same day. I called Harry back and explained that we wanted to leave right away, and he told us where to meet him and that he would make all the arrangements. To be fair, Jane and I did talk it over some, because we didn’t want to be walking into a situation that we couldn’t get out of, or that might put any of us in danger. It was a short conversation.
“The point was that we weren’t doing well staying in Virginia, and we had to leave. It wasn’t good for Jane and me, and it certainly wasn’t good for Lorie. She had no family left. We wanted her to start going to school again, and to have friends her age again...and there was no point in dragging it out. Jane and I agreed that if Harry wasn’t what we expected, we would pick up and go somewhere else—anywhere else, so long as it was outside of Virginia, somewhere we could start over.
“When we got here, Harry seemed to be exactly who he said he was...and now that I know him much better, I know he’s a genuine person and I was lucky that he called me. The day that we got here, he met us and showed us to our hotel room where we’d be staying until our apartment was ready. I was floored by the place. I mean I was already floored that all of this was happening and that someone was going through all the trouble of making us so comfortable, but this hotel room, I’d never seen anything like it.”
“How so?”
“Well, I’m sure part of it was that I’d never stayed anywhere fancy before, but this place was something else. Harry put us up in a suite at the Waldorf, and there was so much going on in it, I felt like I was in a different world.”
“Did that help you feel that you’d gotten away some? That New York City could be a new start?”
“That’s exactly what it was. At the time, I wasn’t sure why he’d put us up somewhere so fancy when we just arrived, but I think he was trying to make us feel the change, to make us feel that this was new…to feel that this was a way to move on and be productive at the same time.”
“What was it like to put your trust in a man who you barely knew, or didn’t really know at all, apart from what he told you in that phone call?”
“It was uncomfortable,” Sven said, “but not as uncomfortable as staying in Charlottesville and reliving...” he trailed off. “We all needed a change, and we grabbed onto what he was offering, because it seemed so much better than what anyone else wanted to do with us. And luckily, it was true. Harry changed our lives drastically, and for the better.”
“So what did you know about Mr. Melling at that point?”
“Just his background, and what he said he wanted from us. He told me that he was born and raised in Brooklyn, and that he went to high school, college, and law school in New York. He told me that he clerked for a while after law school and then worked for a big law firm in the city.”
Mallory nodded.
“Then,” Sven went on, “he became a judge. I basically had his résumé, based on what he’d told me on the phone. He was straightforward about what he was trying to do. It’s not like I thought I was coming here as a charity case. I knew that Harry needed me—and Jane and Lorie, too—for his mayoral campaign.”
“Right, but Melling wasn’t the first to want you as a political ally.”
“No, he wasn’t. But I guess it comes down to the fact that something about all of this felt right. It felt right to come to New York City and try to work on New York City’s outbreak preparedness. So I did, and I’m glad, because it’s been extremely rewarding so far.”
“Did you have an idea of what your role would be, assuming that Melling won the election?”
“Some, yes. Based on our phone call, I knew that he wanted to institute outbreak preparedness on a citywide level, so that, if, God forbid, another outbreak hit, and hit New York City, New Yorkers would have some kind of practical survival plan...so that New York could make it through an outbreak.
“He told me that as densely-populated as New York City is, it needs to be at the forefront of outbreak preparedness, because if an outbreak hit New York City, the fallout would be far worse than what happened in Virginia. People just live so close together here, that without a proper plan, the whole city could fall practically overnight...maybe even faster.”
“It sounds,” Mallory said, “like he wanted New York City to be an example, and he picked you because you had survived an outbreak and experienced the full progression of an outbreak firsthand. You were the perfect man for the job, unfortunately for you...but fortunately for New York City.”
Sven nodded. “Harry said as much. He offered me a spot in his campaign—we were only a few months out from the mayoral election at that point—and a position in his office as Outbreak Contingency Planner—a new position. I would be responsible for preparing the citizens of New York City and New York City’s infrastructure for...well, an outbreak.”
“I know that Jane and Lorie are a large part of your life. How did they feel about this development?”
“They were excited about all of it. Jane and Lorie and I, we all feel very strongly about trying to prevent what happened in Charlottesville from happening anywhere else, or, if another outbreak can’t be prevented, mitigating the effects. On top of that, Jane and Lorie were concerned that I wasn’t coping well with what had happened—not that anyone could be expected to, really, but they seemed to be doing better than I was. They said they thought the job would give me an outlet, something to do and a way to cope at the same time, a way to come to terms with the outbreak. On the whole, they thought it was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up. Just the fact that Harry was putting us up in a new place to live, and arranging for Lorie to go to school in the city so that she could be with kids her own age, that was enough.”
“It sounds like Jane and Lorie were happy about the move, at least as happy as they could be given the circumstances.”
“I think that’s a good way of putting it.” Sven looked across the room at Ivan. The cat was asleep, snoring quietly. “I’m relieved that Lorie is back in school, being a kid again.”
9
FOURTH PERIOD, A CLASSROOM ON THE SIXTH FLOOR OF STUYVESANT HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Lorie plunged the scissors into the front of the zombie’s neck, deep enough that only the handles of the scissors were left showing. I
ts spinal cord severed, the zombie collapsed. Lorie set her sights on the next two zombies, the only ones now left in the room. She looked around, trying to work out what she would use as her next weapon. The scissors were jammed too deep in the dead zombie’s neck to retrieve…and she wanted a new weapon, anyway.
“Lorie?”
She looked up and simultaneously paused the game—Land of Dead Reckoning: Zombies Among Us.
“Yes, Mr. Voleseimer?” she said, as innocently as she could while trying to get her bearings.
Mr. Voleseimer frowned at her. “What were you doing just now?”
Balancing her smart phone in her lap, Lorie said, “Nothing… I mean…paying attention.”
“Really? And to what, exactly, were you paying attention?”
“Uh, to you?”
Mr. Voleseimer sighed, shook his head, and turned back to the blackboard. He stabbed at the blackboard with the nub of chalk that he was holding in his pincer-like fingers. “Can someone who was actually paying attention tell me what these sets of numbers have in common?” He turned around again to face the students.
Lorie looked around the classroom. Some students were staring glassy-eyed at the blackboard. Others were staring intently into their laps, where Lorie guessed their smart phones were hiding. She wondered what games they were playing, and if any of the students could get past level eighteen of Land of Dead Reckoning: Zombies Among Us. Probably not, she decided.
“Anyone?” Mr. Voleseimer said, his voice growing increasingly exasperated. “Anyone at all?”
Lorie raised her hand.
Mr. Voleseimer waved her away. “Yes,” he said irritably, “of course you may go to the bathroom.” He dismissed her with a roll of his eyes and looked at the rest of the students. In his eyes was a dying glimmer of hope…the hope that someone was actually paying attention. A few moments of silence passed. Mr. Voleseimer’s eyelids drooped as he began to accept that no one was paying attention to him, and that no one ever would, and that the study of mathematics would never be what it used to be when he was—
