All Our Tomorrows

by Peter Cawdron

  “I’d like to think neither of us need these,” I say, looking at Ajeet. I pull back on the slide and eject a lone bullet from the chamber.

  Ajeet lets a slight smile slip from his lips. He’s outplayed Doyle. Ajeet took a gamble, and it paid dividends. I’m sure this won’t be lost on the other scientists.

  I place the now defunct, empty gun on the table. Steve follows suit, emptying his gun and placing it on a counter by the door.

  “Don’t,” Ajeet says, looking at Doyle with eyes that pierce the soul.

  “What the hell is wrong with you people?” Doyle cries, gesturing toward his pistol still lying on the floor. He desperately wants to grab it, and yet some indistinct social norm, perhaps a vague notion of group acceptance, paralyzes even this fearless warrior. “What? You think just because they’re nice and polite they won’t slit your throat in the middle of the night?”

  “We have talked about this day,” Ajeet says. Again, his voice resonates with compassion. “Our fight is with zombies, not survivors.”

  “Damn you!” Doyle yells, trying to stare down Ajeet. But Ajeet is not intimidated. The veins on Doyle’s neck budge. His face is red with anger. Ajeet remains calm regardless.

  And I thought Ferguson was a handful.

  “Listen,” I say. “We can help you.”

  “You?” Doyle replies as though I’m being rude. Apparently, I’ve interrupted a serious conversation between the adults. “We still don’t know whether you’ll turn. Perhaps there’s some delayed progression we don’t know about, something that will kick in when we least expect it. And besides, you’re just kids. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

  Johnson says, “Wait a minute. You saw the way those zombies acted around the two of them. Those zombies in the mall displayed a level of cognitive behavior we’ve only guessed at before. They dumped Steve in the heart of a hive without tearing him limb from limb, and then they herded Hazel toward him. We have no idea what this means. But if we can work with these kids to better understand this phenomena, it could be a turning point.”

  Kids. When Johnson uses that word it’s measured and appropriate, unlike Doyle.

  “We need to help them,” Elizabeth says. “They’re not criminals.”

  I like Elizabeth.

  I relax, sitting back on a table in the cafeteria. I’m glad we surrendered the guns. With the exception of Doyle, this is a discussion between peers. Steve joins me, sitting up on the table beside me. His hand rests gently on mine, signaling his support.

  The most fascinating aspect of the last few minutes is that no one, absolutely no one, is interested in picking up the guns we surrendered. They’re still sitting on the table just a few inches from my hand. Even Doyle only has eyes for his own gun. No one seems to realize we could rearm as quickly as we took over the first time, but this tells me something important about the scientists. Theirs is a world ruled by reason, not the threat of violence. It’s no wonder they’ve kept themselves isolated.

  Ajeet says, “I mean, look at them. This is a gift. We have two people who are not affected by zombie bites. That is astonishing! We need to analyze what’s happening in their bodies at a cellular level. We need to see if we can replicate this in others.”

  I’m on the verge of mentioning the anti-parasite tablets, but I suspect that would lead the conversation off on a tangent. At the moment, it’s Doyle we need to win over.

  Doyle isn’t buying it.

  “So ya’ll just want to sit around the campfire singing songs and holding hands and making smores and shit? Is that it?”

  “We’re scientists, Rob,” Ajeet says, and I note how he’s appealing to Doyle on a personal level—with Doyle’s first name being added in a soft, considerate tone. “We were never going to win this war with bullets and grenades. If we are to defeat these monsters, we need to approach the problem from a scientific perspective.”

  Doyle slams his fist into a table. The dynamic within the room has shifted, and he doesn’t like it. Force is all he understands, and it’s failing him. When Doyle first burst into the cafeteria, he was in charge. We grabbed the guns and stole the focus, but since we’ve surrendered, it’s Ajeet that’s in control. I guess, technically, we surrendered to Ajeet, not Doyle, and that’s given Ajeet authority over him. It’s strange how human behavior can be so intricate and nuanced.

  Elizabeth says, “You’ve got to let us do our job.”

  Doyle turns on us, crying, “They’re goddamn scavengers! Vultures!”

  I shake my head. There are times in life where words cannot express the lunacy people cling to in their mistaken ideals. He’s beyond reason, so I keep my mouth shut. Words would only inflame things further. It’s not easy, but I grit my teeth.

  Doyle isn’t satisfied with that. He reacts as though I’ve said something aggressive, perhaps even offensive with my silence.

  “So what? I should have a bleeding heart because people are dying out there?”

  “No,” I snap, unable to let his pigheaded stupidity pass me by. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s over. The war is over! People aren’t dying out there. They’re living out there. They’re living their lives and they’ve left you behind.”

  The veins on his neck bulge and I’m glad he doesn’t have a firearm, but this time, I’m the one that’s enraged. I point at him, yelling, “You think you’re so damn important? Outside these walls, no one cares. NO ONE! You hide in your rabbit hole protecting a way of life that died long ago. No one cares about your medals or your uniform. We’ve moved on!”

  Doyle steps toward me and I’m suddenly acutely aware he was the one that struck me with the rifle butt in the simulation room. It’s the way his boots stomp on the ground that gives it away. Steve isn’t having any of this. Gun or no gun, he’s ready to kill this guy if he so much as lays a finger on me. I can see that in the tense muscles lining his jaw. Doyle might be physically bigger and stronger than Steve, but I doubt that will matter. Steve is about to explode. I put my hand on his, gently holding him back. If these two start throwing punches, it won’t end until there’s only one of them still breathing.

  “I am a brigadier general in the United States Army,” Doyle yells, bellowing like a drill sergeant. “I will not be lectured by a goddamn child.”

  “United?” I reply, letting the child bit go but latching onto something I think is important to highlight. I feel terrible, but I cannot help but laugh at the notion of our country being united. The concept is absurd in the apocalypse. Doyle is such a pompous ass. “United States? Have you looked around lately, general? There’s no army. There’s no U.S. There aren’t even any states any more. And even if there were, they certainly aren’t united. The only thing that’s united is Zee.”

  “She’s right,” Ajeet says, stepping between Doyle and us. I’m guessing he saw Steve’s white knuckles and clenched fists.

  I know I should be intimidated by Doyle, but I’m not and I can’t explain why. When it came to Ferguson yelling at me, I almost wet my pants, but for all his faults, Ferguson was fair. Perhaps that’s what irks me about Doyle. He’s not honest. Not with himself. Not with us or with the scientists. He’s got his world view and that’s it. Nothing and no one is going to talk him out of what he’s already decided.

  Ajeet addresses Doyle, saying, “I appreciate your security concerns, general, but everything is okay. We’re fine.”

  Doyle replies to Ajeet, but his eyes never leave mine.

  “One violation. One infraction or breach in security, that’s all it would take for the horde out there to overrun this facility.”

  “I know,” Ajeet says.

  “You don’t let these two out of your sight. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Reluctantly, Doyle walks toward the door. He bends down and picks up his gun and I feel my heart pounding in my throat as his fingers slip around the pistol grip, but he slides his gun into its holster and leaves, slamming the door in disgust.

  “Asshole,”
Steve mutters under his breath. I’m pretty sure everyone in the room heard him. No one seems to disagree.

  With a clap of his hands, Ajeet says, “Who wants coffee?”

  Surreal.

  I stare at Ajeet with disbelief.

  “Well,” he says, with an irrepressible smile. “A geneticist has to be useful for something in the zombie apocalypse.”

  I’m stunned. How can he detach himself from the argument with Doyle so quickly? Seeing the look on my face, Ajeet adds, “What? I used to work as a barista while at college.”

  Ajeet grins, adding, “I’m a man of many talents.”

  I have no idea what a barista is. At a guess, I’d think it’s someone that works in a bar, but apparently it’s someone who makes coffee?

  “You have coffee?” Steve asks. Like me, I doubt he’s ever had a cup of coffee in his life. Occasionally, the marauders would liberate some freeze dried coffee still in its vacuum packaging, and Marge would make up a vat full of coffee for the commune, but us kids never got any. It wouldn’t last more than an hour or so before it was all gone. Dad would let me sip his coffee, but it was so bitter I never tried it more than once. I couldn’t understand why everyone raved about coffee. Even the teens.

  Ajeet says, “Like almost everything around us, our coffee supplies will outlast us.” And that provides more of an insight into their stockpile than I think he intended. But the essence of his comment worked. Mentally, we’ve all moved on from Doyle.

  “Count me in,” says Steve as the others all put in their requests with names that sound Italian.

  “Me too,” I say. It’s the allure, the idea more than the substance that attracts me.

  “Sugar? Creamer?” he asks.

  Steve and I look at each other and nod. Seems like an awful waste of sugar. And as for creamer, I’m guessing that’s a type of milk. It’s been so long these concepts are distant memories. We get a lot of honey and fruit in the commune, but no refined sugar as such. Honestly, it’s just nice to not have a zombie chasing me or a gun pointed at my head right now. I’d eat dried cockroaches if they offered them to me.

  “So we’ve got a geneticist and an anthropologist,” I say, not sure what either actually does, but the titles sound impressive. I face Elizabeth, asking, “What about you?”

  “Oh, not me,” she replies. “I’m not a scientist, not in the strict sense of the word. I’m a doctor. A pediatrician.”

  “Oh, Dr. O’Connor,” Ajeet says from the kitchen. “You should give yourself more credit.”

  She smiles at his comment. The look on my face must tell her I have no idea what a pediatrician does.

  “I specialize in working with young children.”

  “Ah,” I say, still not really grasping why that would be any different to treating adults.

  Steve says, “So you weren’t part of the original team? You’re one of the survivors?”

  “Yes,” she says, and suddenly everything makes sense. For her, seeing us is a glimpse of what she once went through, and I wonder if someone stood up for her as well at some point. Perhaps Ajeet?

  Elizabeth continues, saying, “We don’t see many young children around here so these days I’m more of a generalist.”

  One of the women comes over and sits down across from us. She has her hands clenched in front of her. Normally, I’d take that as a sign of being nervous, but her eyes seem to pierce my soul.

  “Dana Benson,” she says. Dana is in her late fifties, maybe her early sixties, and of African-American descent. With neatly cropped hair and high cheekbones, she could be mistaken for an actor or a model rather than a scientist. “So … you were bitten. Both of you.”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling as though behind this warm exterior there’s a cold, calculating killer. I shouldn’t think like that. She’s probably really nice, but her demeanor is stern. If I were to lie, I’m sure she’d see straight through me.

  Ajeet places coffee cups in front of Steve and me. Steam wafts from the mugs but neither of us touch our coffee. Dana is too formal to interrupt.

  “How did you survive?”

  She’s smart. She knows there’s a catch, and she knows we know precisely why we survived when others either turned or died. Ajeet and Elizabeth might be content to run tests, Dana wants answers.

  “My dad. He’s studied them.”

  That gets Ajeet’s attention.

  “How?” he asks.

  “I don’t know exactly, but he keeps heads in jars, stretches their skin out on racks. Things like that.”

  Jameson, the anthropologist, laughs, saying, “I like this guy already.”

  “Dad figured out that zombie skin cells use photosynthesis for energy.”

  No one’s laughing any more. They’re all listening intently.

  “He said there are sea slugs or something that steal genes from algae. He said the zombies are like that. He, um. He put a light on the skin and it made a needle jump.”

  Not the most scientific of descriptions, I know, but I can see Ajeet’s eyes lighting up. He whispers to Jameson, saying something about confirmation, but Jameson signals for quiet, not wanting to break my train of thought.

  “My dad—he doesn’t think all this is caused by a virus. He thinks it’s a complex relationship between several microbial species. He called it a chain. He said, break the chain—break the cycle—and you won’t turn.”

  “And you broke the cycle?” Dana says, leading the conversation on. All the scientists have gathered around. It’s a little unnerving being the center of their undivided attention.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “We found some tablets—”

  “The vet’s office,” Ajeet says, snapping his fingers.

  “You knew about that?” I ask.

  “Go on,” Dana says, but I’m distracted by Ajeet.

  “How did you know?”

  “Traffic cameras,” Jameson says. “We monitor zombie activity using whatever means we can.”

  Dana stares deep into my eyes. I can’t keep eye contact with her, and yet I feel compelled to go on.

  “My dad. He was infected. We went to the clinic to find worm tablets.”

  “And the tablets?” Elizabeth says. “They worked?”

  “Yes.”

  Dana faces Ajeet, asking, “Flatworms? Hookworms? Amoebas? Is there a symbiotic connection? Is there something we’ve missed beyond a viral infection?”

  “There are parasites that produce neurotoxins affecting mammalian behavior,” Ajeet replies. “But something so radical would take millennia to evolve.”

  “This would explain why the vaccines fail,” Elizabeth says.

  “Anthelmintics,” Ajeet says. “They’d work against a broad range of microbial parasites without injuring the host. Pyrantel will paralyze a whole branch of microscopic nematodes, not just your classic tapeworms. We did some work with mebendazole before it was discontinued in humans, but I think it was still used in pets at the time of the outbreak. Mebendazole has a broad base of intracellular action, far beyond parasites. It even showed promise against lung cancer. It’s not as quick as Pyrantel, but it works extremely well.”

  Jameson asks, “So the mode of action is to disrupt a parasitic life cycle and prevent cascading tissue degradation?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  Ajeet replies, “The rapid onset has always been troubling. If you can engender a zombie transformation so quickly, why can’t you block it just as quickly?”

  “It’s an interesting thought,” Dana says.

  My excitement gets the better of me.

  “Interesting thought? It’s a cure.”

  “Not so fast,” Dana says. “Even though he’s pigheaded, Doyle may yet be right. You look perfectly healthy today, but the effect could be temporary. Rather than finding a cure, you may have simply delayed the onset.”

  Not what I wanted to hear.

  “But I’m fine,” I protest. “I feel fine.”

  Elizabeth touc
hes the back of her hand to my forehead, saying, “Slight fever, but she could be fighting a regular bacterial infection given the state of her wounds.”

  “I’m not going to turn into one of those things,” I insist.

  Elizabeth senses my anxiety. She rests her hand on my forearm.

  “Hey,” she says. “It’s all right. We’re all in this together. We’re here to help.”

  Steve says, “I bet you say that to all your lab rats.”

  I laugh. I thought it was funny, but no one else laughs.

  Jameson says, “If her father is correct and the transformation is blocked by an anthelmintic, then so long as she’s not exposed to the parasite again, she’ll be fine.”

  “But which parasite?” Ajeet asks. “I mean, we could be dealing anything from a roundworm to an amoeba.”

  “And there’s the problem of phenotypes,” Dana says. “The anthelmintic may work today, but use this strategy too broadly and we could inadvertently breed a resistant variety of zombies and end up right back where we are today.”

  Ajeet says, “I’m going to need some zombie fecal matter. If this parasite is in the gut, it’ll pass out through the bowels. We should be able to find eggs.”

  “Poo?” Steve says with disgust, and I’m with him. I cannot think of anything more foul than searching through zombie shit for some microscopic creature.

  Jameson says, “We need to keep you under watch. Until we identify the parasite, you could inadvertently be exposed to it and the transformation would be triggered again.”

  I am not liking what I’m hearing, but I tell myself this is good to know.

  Ajeet says, “Yes, yes. Regardless of the particular tablet you took, the anthelmintic would have done it’s work and passed through you with the next bowel movement. Don’t think you’re immune, young lady. One bite and you’ll turn.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I’ve been stupidly reckless the last few days, feeling somewhat invulnerable to Zee. Dumb luck has kept me safe, not brains or brawn.

  We thought those tablets were a game changer, and in a way they still are, but they’re no silver bullet taking out these werewolves once and for all.