by Joss Ware
Her voice trailed off and she looked at him. Suddenly, there was a sharpness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “So, are you going to tell me what really happened last night?”
Working on a mouthful of sandwich, Theo blinked and kept chewing. The way to a man’s heart—or in this case, confidence—was definitely through his stomach. Talk about a bait and switch. “I figure,” he said after he swallowed, “you can probably make a good guess.”
They looked at each other for a moment, neither of them willing to give in. Then he caved and took another bite of sandwich.
Vonnie just glared at him, all traces of mother hen gone and replaced by the principal tapping her foot, waiting for an answer about who had rewired the fire alarms to go off at precisely the beginning of English midterms. Amazing how a woman could quick-change like that. Frightening, really. Theo’s mom had been like that. And so was Selena.
“What happened with Brandon?” he asked stubbornly. “At least give me that.”
“Were you with her out there? At least give me that,” she parroted right back at him. And lifted a pert nose to look down at him just a bit.
“Yes. I was with her.”
Vonnie’s shoulders seemed to deflate. “Thank God. She refuses to let me go with her; and I sleep so heavily, I never hear her leave. I only find out after the fact . . . when it’s time to patch her up.”
Theo filed away that information for future reference—the part about Vonnie sleeping heavily. In the room only two doors down from Selena’s. “She didn’t let me go with her,” he clarified. “I followed her out there.”
He popped a wedge of pear into his mouth. “Is that what happened with Brandon? He found out about her? Then what? He tried to make her stop? Can’t say I blame the guy not wanting the mother of his child to be torn apart by zombies.”
Vonnie’s pretty face grew soft and sad. “It wasn’t that simple. And I don’t know if I should tell you what happened—”
“I think you’d better,” he replied flatly. “I saw her out there. I don’t want that to happen again. And she . . . well, I get the impression that she wants me to forget about it and leave it alone. And leave here. Is that what Brandon did? He left her?”
“No, oh no. She left him. We all did. Me and her and Sam. We had to.” Vonnie blinked rapidly and stared out the window for a moment. “She tried to explain to them—to everyone—what she was doing. They didn’t really understand, but at least she got them to listen.”
“Who are you talking about? In Yellow Mountain?”
“No, oh no,” she replied. “This was before we came here to Yellow Mountain. We were at Sivs. Over south of here, more than a week’s travel time.” Like Selena, she flapped her hand in a generic direction that wasn’t even close to south. “It took her a long time, but she finally told him—Brandon—what she was doing. That her way was better and kinder to the zombies. He didn’t want to believe her, and he didn’t want her to get hurt. He did love her . . . he just didn’t understand her.”
Vonnie jabbed her finger toward the last bite of his sandwich. “Like, she won’t eat any meat or anything from a creature that’s been killed. It’s her way. And that was one thing he never accepted. He’d try to get her to eat a piece of chicken or a bit of fish now and then. Once he tried to trick her into it by slipping a bit of meat in a stew she was eating. When she found out, she was sick afterward. Really sick. So now she won’t eat anything unless I cook it.”
“I can see that.” Theo was only half following Vonnie’s rambling explanation, but it was interesting nevertheless. Sounded like Brandon was a real asshole. He wasn’t too sad about that. “What happened at Sivs?”
“Brandon found out about what she was doing and tried to stop her from doing it. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. She can’t not do it, she told me. It’d be like her not helping the people dying. She can’t ignore it. Even though it’s hard.”
“How long has she been the Death Lady?”
Vonnie glanced toward the rest of the room, as if to make sure no one was approaching. “She saw her first death cloud when she was five. But she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t realize what she was doing until she was older.”
“Death cloud?”
Vonnie looked uncomfortable. “It’s really not my place to tell you, Theo. But . . . it’s what she sees when someone’s going to die. She guards her secrets well; and if she wants you to know more than that, she’ll tell you. But the last person she told was Brandon, and that didn’t turn out so well. Brandon and the people at Sivs.”
Theo struggled to control his frustration. “What happened at Sivs?”
“Everyone hates the zombies. They’re terrified of them. Everyone’s lost someone to a zombie. Someone they know.”
“Yeah. For sure. That’s why the earth needs to be rid of them. They’re the only creatures on this earth that don’t have a reason for being. They’re evil.” Theo glanced outside, checking the position of the sun. “Abnormal, not a part of the circle of life. Cannibalistic monsters.”
Vonnie bit her lip. “Selena has a different perspective.”
“She kills them—it can’t be that different of a perspective. And she does it in an inefficient, dangerous way. Why the hell doesn’t she use arrows or a bomb or fire or something?”
“Because that’s not her way. It’s more humane, she says, the way she does it. She has to rescue them. Selena can’t bear to see the destruction of life. She won’t let Frank set mouse traps unless they’re cages and the mice can be set free outside.”
Theo shook his head, frustrated and confused. “What zombies do isn’t living. It’s . . . I don’t know what, but it’s not living. It’s evil. They eat anyone or anything; and what they don’t eat, they destroy just for the hell of it. It’s a damn good thing they’re dumb as rocks or we’d have ceased to exist on this earth.” He’d made his way through the carrots and now lifted the iced tea to drink. Ahh. Just the perfect amount of sweet.
Vonnie’s lips pursed. “Well, you’re sounding like Brandon a bit now. But somehow, she convinced him to see her side of it; and when he made a big fuss about her going out at night, they came up with an idea. If the rest of the town would help, they could corral all the zombies and then Selena could do her thing in relative safety.”
“Sort of like putting a group of wild dogs down one by one after you cage them?” Theo asked. “Still not very efficient, but at least it would be safer for her.”
“Selena convinced them to try it and they built a corral. And they managed to do it—to trick a bunch of the zombies to go in there one night. Locked them in and everything was fine. She took care of a few every night, carefully.”
“Until . . . Aw, crap. Let me guess. They got loose?”
She nodded. “It was ugly. Horrifying. They were trapped inside the walls with the rest of us, and they got out. By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. The zombies were crazed and frightened and wild—and hungry—and they attacked. Selena tried to stop them, tried to help, but by then it was too late. The damage was done. Children, the elderly, even some of the young, strong men who’d been building a solar-powered vehicle were all destroyed. The death count was nearly half of the population of the settlement.”
Theo felt sick. He didn’t really need to hear more; he could imagine it. “What did they do?”
“Well, of course, everyone blamed Selena. As if she’d caused it herself, as if she’d forced those zombies to come out and attack everyone. And Brandon couldn’t even look at her. He wouldn’t listen to her. And she . . . well, of course she took it all on herself. All of it. She needed him and he couldn’t give her what she needed.” Vonnie glanced at him sidewise and Theo felt the pointedness of her glare. “And so, we left. They would never forgive her. She couldn’t go anywhere without being spat on or pushed or ignored or . . . whatever. It was ugly.
“They called her a zombie lover. And it wasn’t a compliment,” Vonnie said, se
emingly following Theo’s thoughts along its silent path. “Then they started wondering whether what she was doing out there with them wasn’t really killing them, but somehow hypnotizing them and training them to do her bidding. We had to leave.”
By now, Theo was feeling ill himself. What a horrible story. He could understand both sides, both perspectives of what had happened. It was the same sort of thing that had happened after 9/11—too many people blamed every Muslim for what had been done by a dozen radical ones.
It was human nature: to find a scapegoat, to place blame on someone when something tragic happened.
It wasn’t always right, nor was it the best aspect of humanity, but it was a common reaction.
But he still didn’t have any greater admiration for Brandon.
“But that’s not the last of it,” Vonnie said. “We moved on and stayed at a place called Crossroads for a while; maybe a year or so. Of course after that last experience, Selena wasn’t willing to trust anyone about her mission. She was still helping dying people find their way to wherever their afterlife was, but she wouldn’t ignore her need to help the zombies. So this time, she didn’t tell anyone what she was doing. But, then, people started to see her. Out, in the dark, beyond the walls at night with the zombies. It appeared to them that she was helping or training them, or something.
“Since there’d recently been a rash of zombie attacks against three teenagers, the people of Crossroads became incensed at the thought of someone helping or protecting the zombies. They started calling her horrible things and shunning her, and it escalated there too. Then a young woman was attacked one night beyond the walls, and killed, and that was the end of that. They blamed Selena’s ‘zombie loving’ for attracting the monsters, and an angry group from the settlement came and tried to take her away and lock her up. We left instead.”
Jesus. No wonder Selena didn’t want to talk about it. No wonder she didn’t feel as if she could trust anyone. He understood, but it still bothered him that she wouldn’t trust him.
“So we came here. Actually, we met Frank and he brought us here. That’s why we don’t live in Yellow Mountain, and why she doesn’t go there very often. The less people know about her, the happier she is. To them, she’s just the Death Lady. Not a zombie lover.”
Theo was nodding, but his stomach churned. The stories reminded him of the Salem witch trials—innocent people tainted and judged, even murdered, because of a bunch of superstitious people.
Yet he still didn’t understand why Selena was so intent on making the deaths of zombies so comfortable. Why she risked her life to help them—as if they were her pets that had somehow gone feral.
It reminded him of one of their neighbors when he and Lou were growing up. Mrs. Cloud had had a rottweiler that had attacked and killed another neighbor’s cat.
Theo and Lou had played with the rott many times, and had even seen it be around a cat without showing any aggressive behavior. But this one time, something must have happened to provoke it, and the dog had attacked. The courts had ordered the dog to be put down; and although Lou and Theo had protested and picketed and wrote letters (this was before Twitter and Facebook groups) for the life of the dog, the decision had prevailed.
The cat owner celebrated at the dog’s death, but Mrs. Cloud and the others who’d known Butch grieved.
“And Brandon? What about Sam?”
Vonnie shrugged. “Selena sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him in Sivs with Brandon. And he cared more about his standing in the settlement than about his family. It wasn’t a tough decision.”
Theo nodded. That cleared a few things up. “Thanks,” he said, “for telling me about that.”
Vonnie looked at him. “Now I want something from you.”
Back into mother mode. Theo nodded again.
“How long are you planning to stick around here?”
“Here, up here?” Theo gestured to the room.
She frowned at him and actually tapped her foot in rapid succession.
“Oh, here? . . . around Yellow Mountain?” He tried out the grin that always had worked on his own mom, and was rewarded with a twitch of her lips. “I don’t know. I can tell you that, right now, I don’t have any reason to leave. And . . . I feel like I have a lot of reasons to stay.”
Vonnie looked at him, then snatched up the tray. She gave a brief, sharp nod. “All right, then, young man”—she looked at the computers, and then at him—“I don’t know what you’re doing up here, and I’m not going to ask. Just be careful with those. They’ve caused a lot of grief.”
“Thanks, Vonnie,” he said as she walked out of the room.
Then he turned back to the touch screen computer and stared at it. They’ve caused a lot of grief, but they hold secrets. They must.
“What the fuck is your secret, Blizek? Did you join them? Did you help to destroy the damned world?” Theo demanded, staring at the large screen. “Are you living somewhere with a damned crystal in your skin?”
Frustrated, he began to wing his fingers around on the screen, pointing, spreading, pinching, and he watched windows open and open and open inside and on top of each other. He left the area of prototype games, and stopped trying to dig into the deepest layers of security.
Instead, he went to photos and emails and videos. He looked at simple documents and some basic coding.
And then he saw it. His whole body went cold and still.
IF THE WORLD ENDS.mov
A video.
Not even very well hidden; in fact, he’d have found it sooner if he hadn’t been digging for what he thought was the good stuff.
His heart pounding, Theo clicked on it and suddenly a video opened, filling the touch screen, and there was Brad Blizek. On the wall, just like the Wizard of Oz.
He spoke to the camera, quickly, in a low voice. Urgency written all over his homely face.
“If you’re seeing this, then the worst has come to pass. I’m dead, for they won’t let me live once they realize that I’m not really part of them. I’m not with them. They’re going to destroy the world.”
At this point, Theo gave an audible sigh of relief—and in the video, Brad glanced behind and hunched his shoulders as if expecting to be interrupted at any time.
“I’ll talk as long as I can, give you as much as I can, but when I hear them, I’m going to close this. It’s coded to automatically upload to news outlets, YouTube and back to my own LAN.”
He flinched, his face tightening, and then spoke even more quickly and softly. Theo could see that his hand was positioned on the desk in front of the webcam he was using, as if ready to click a mouse at a moment’s notice.
“I found out about them years ago. They wanted me to join and I pretended to do so. For fifty million. The cost was nothing, so I gave it to them because I wanted to know what they were doing. While developing hardware and software for them, I’ve also carefully hacked into their systems. It’s hard because it needs to leave no trace of my presence; and even though I’m brilliant, they’re watching me. I’m working with truth to begin to collect data, to try and find a way to stop this. They’re so strong and so far-reaching that any attempts to publicize will result in it being squelched, not to mention my death. So I’m trying to find a way to use their—”
Another sound was audible enough to be heard on the webcam, and his eyes grew wide and he leaned closer to the computer, whispering loudly now. “It’s them. It’s the Cult of Atlantis. They’re fucking raising the island of Atlantis and it’s going to wobble the world. They’re doing—”
He glanced behind him and the screen went blank.
“Holy mother-fucking shit.” Theo stared at the screen for a long time before the hair on his arms relaxed. Then he played it again. And again. And again. His heart had gone up into his throat and he stared at the screen.
If he’d seen it fifty years ago, he’d have thought it was a joke.
But now he knew three things: He and Lou had been right in their theories.
Brad Blizek had been a good guy all along. And Brad Blizek was definitely dead.
Chapter 9
Robert didn’t pass on to the afterlife until late the following morning, a whole twenty-four hours after Selena had told Theo she didn’t talk to anyone about her secrets, and almost ten days after Theo had been resurrected.
Despite her abused body, she had been busy in the last day. A bit slower, but busy. She’d kept herself that way on purpose.
Whether by accident or design, she hadn’t spoken to Theo since he left her bedroom with a very sharp, telling click of the door closing behind him. She hadn’t even seen him, except from a distance through the window when she caught sight of him walking back from what looked like a swim: dripping wet, bare torso gleaming in the sun, every muscle and curve perfect on his dark skin, the red dragon shifting in the daylight. Her mouth had gone dry and her belly filled with butterflies, and she turned resolutely away.
The thing that made her stomach unsettled wasn’t so much the look of his body, but the thought of how much she missed him. Just . . . missed him. She sensed he might never be comfortable around her again, after what he’d seen last night.
Surprisingly, since the horrible events, Selena hadn’t been the recipient of an anticipated lecture from Vonnie about her nocturnal activities. In fact, everyone seemed to be particularly kind and quiet around her.
She wondered why. She wondered, uneasily, why it felt as if the calm before the storm.
However, the most disturbing occurrence happened on the third day after she awoke in her bedroom. Theo was absent again for the evening meal, and Selena wasn’t certain whether she should be relieved that he seemed to be avoiding her—possibly even preparing to leave, as she’d suggested—or whether to allow just a bit of sadness to seep into her mind. She certainly felt a little lost, but tried to talk herself out of it.
