by Joe McKinney
But it wasn’t the lack of leadership that really bothered him. It was the zombies that he’d shot. The amount of decay he’d seen was way beyond anything he’d ever seen before. Back when he was training to go outside the walls with the salvage teams, he’d been shown pictures of zombies, and told what to look for. Some of the old ones could look like moldering corpses rotting away in doorways, their skin so cracked and dry, their muscles so atrophied, they looked more like hunks of beef jerky than zombies. But they could get up. They could go from dormant to attack mode in the time it took you to turn your back on them. And they were every bit as lethal as the freshly turned ones.
Somebody had asked the trainer how old a zombie could get before they finally rotted away, and the trainer had said she didn’t know. Nobody knew for sure. Six years maybe, maybe even eight, if they lived in the right climate and didn’t tear themselves apart while hunting their prey.
Flesh could only last so long, after all, even with the help of CDHLs.
Back in school he’d learned about the First Days. The zombies weren’t the product of terrorism or a rogue virus or junk DNA, but the entrepreneurial desire to make vegetables last longer on the shelves.
China, his teachers said, had experimented with pesticides and preservatives, looking for a way to make their domestically grown foodstuffs stay fresher longer. Their efforts culminated in a family of chemical compounds known as carbon dioxide blocking hydrolyzed lignin, or CDHLs. The Chinese tested it, claimed it was safe, and spread it over everything that grew.
The compounds were tested, and eventually vetted by the FDA. Once the Food and Drug Administration declared CDHLs safe for human consumption, they spread across the globe. Suddenly plums could stay purple and juicy for months at a time. Roses never wilted. Celery, carrots, even lettuce could sit on a grocery store shelf for weeks and still look as fresh as the day they were harvested. Even bananas could stay traffic light yellow for three months.
The blood banks were the first to report signs of trouble. CDHLs didn’t appear to break down in the human bloodstream the way they did in plants. There was no cause for immediate worry, except that blood supersaturated with CDHLs seemed to stay unnaturally healthy and vital well beyond any sort of conventional measure.
In hindsight, Jacob’s teachers had said, it should have been obvious.
CDHLs were linked through study after study to hyperactive behavior in children.
Unfocused aggression was a common symptom of adults of middle age. Housewives killing their children and waiting at the kitchen table with a butcher’s knife for their husband’s return from work shouldn’t have seemed like business as usual.
And yet it was.
The First Days had crept up on them like a thief in the night, even though it should have been obvious what the CDHLs were doing to them.
The trouble started in China. The central cities of Wei-shan and Qinghai were the first to erupt in anarchy. The Chinese, much to their credit, made no attempt to cover up what was going on. Video streamed out to every news service and website, and those first glimpses of the dead crowding the streets were terrifying beyond all reckoning.
From Central China the zombie hordes spread to the more densely populated coastal cities, and by that point there was no saving mainland Asia. Everyone who could evacuate did. They fled to Japan and Australia, some even to the United States, but many millions were left behind to be devoured. There were simply too many to save.
The rest of the world watched it happen, believing that their quarantine efforts had worked. But of course the quarantine effort was merely shutting the barn door after the cow was already out. The culprit, the CDHLs were already in the ground, already in the food, already in the bodies of everyone who had ever eaten something bought from the grocery store. All that was needed was for the body to reach a point of super saturation. Once that happened, zombification spread.
Eight months after the first incidents in China, more were reported in Japan, and Mexico, and the United States. Living through the First Days was like being caught up in a wildfire. No sooner had you smelled smoke than the flames erupted all around you. Every night the televisions had shown maps, and on those maps, red circles spread like bloodstains.
But the real terror, and it was a terror that every man, woman, and child still lived with, was the fact that the CDHLs were already in their bodies. You didn’t become a zombie by being bit, or scratched, or accidentally ingesting any of their bodily fluids. You didn’t have to, because you were already a zombie waiting to happen. They were all, to a body, carriers of the zombie plague.
And once they died, they came back.
There was some hope, though. The belief of those who claimed to know such things was that the levels of CDHLs in the soil and in the crops were starting to go down. In Jacob’s salvage days, the botanists had asked him to take soil samples. Those results, they said, were encouraging. So, too, was the fact that fewer and fewer zombies seemed to be lasting more than a year or two. The more a zombie fed, the more CDHL it ingested, thereby keeping it viable longer, preserving it. The zombies from the First Days had lasted more than a decade, Jacob had been told. That wasn’t thought to be happening anymore.
And that was what troubled him.
The ones he’d shot down by the river were far older than anything he remembered seeing in those training pictures. It made him wonder if they really knew half of what they thought they knew about the outside world.
But of course that was a whole other issue. And a bitter one.
With a heavy sigh, he started writing again. He had only put a few words on the page when Steve Harrigan appeared in the doorway behind him.
“Jacob, it’s time.”
Jacob’s blood went cold. He put his pen down and felt his face flush with heat. Had he really forgotten what he was about to do? It seemed impossible, but that’s what he’d done.
He put both hands on the table and tried to steady himself, but it was no good. All over again he was a jangled mess.
Steve put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on.”
Slowly, as if he were going to his own execution—and maybe, in a way, he was—he rose to his feet. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” he said.
“You’re gonna do just fine.” Steve held out his hand. “Here, take these. I didn’t know if you had any left after this morning.”
Jacob held his hand out. The older man dropped four rounds into his palm.
“Oh. Thanks.”
With trembling hands, Jacob used the bullets to top off his magazine. “How do you know I’ll do fine?” he asked, and seated the magazine into the receiver.
“You remember the words you’re supposed to say?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll do fine. Just point the weapon at his forehead and fire. Don’t look away. Just say the words and fire.”
“Do I look him in the face? I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You have to. If you don’t, your hands will shake. You might miss, or worse, hit him with a glancing blow that doesn’t kill him. Nobody wants that.” Steve put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder and guided him toward the cells. “Come on, it’s time.”
They walked back to the cells in silence, just the echo of their boots on the tile floor. Jerry Grieder was in Cell Two, sitting on the cot, his face in his hands. Like Amanda, he’d stopped caring for himself. He hadn’t eaten a full meal since they’d locked him up. His clothes were dark with sweat and grime and he hadn’t shaved in a week. Sheriff Taylor had at first refused to let Amanda in the cell with him, but in the end had relented. She’d spent most of the morning with him. She wasn’t there now, but there were flowers on the bed next to him.
Steve said, “Jerry, time to get up.”
Jerry said nothing. He didn’t resist either. He let out a sigh, and then slowly pulled himself to his feet. He was a tall, flat-footed man with long, stringy brown hair. Jacob moved in close to handcuff Jerry and caught a whiff that made
him flinch. He steadied himself and took Jerry by the wrist. He pulled back the man’s sleeves and was surprised to see a bright pink lacy cloth bracelet there. Except for the fabric, it looked like the bracelets the children over at the school made. At first Jacob was confused, until he remembered that Amanda was a schoolteacher. Technically, he should have removed it, but he put the handcuffs on like he hadn’t seen it.
He stepped to one side of Jerry and Steve went to the other.
“All right, let’s go,” Steve said.
The three men left the cell and walked in silence out the front door. The sunlight was bright and Jerry recoiled against it. Jacob and Steve gave him a moment to recover, and then they rounded the corner that led on to Main Plaza.
There were perhaps forty people gathered near the old stone fountain, among them Sheriff Taylor, all but two members of the town council, and of course, Amanda Grieder. Jacob was surprised, and grateful, too, to see his friends Kelly Banis and Nick Carroll. Kelly’s husband, Barry, put his arm around her and she melted into him. She was crying, but trying not to. Beside them, Nick had his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. He nodded to Jacob in quiet support.
Amanda began to cry as soon as Jerry came into view, her moans the only sound as a cold wind swept through the square.
Jacob put a hand on Jerry’s elbow and led him forward.
“You can’t do this,” Amanda shouted. “He’s innocent.”
Nobody else spoke.
Jacob and the others continued on to the fountain, and as they walked, Jacob couldn’t shake the thought that the others had chosen the fountain, the centerpiece of which was the Blind Lady of Justice, not out of tradition, or a sense of symbolism, but out of fear that the executioner might lose his nerve and miss.
They wanted a backstop.
“You didn’t even find the jewelry,” Amanda yelled. “How can you say he’s guilty?”
That much was true, Jacob thought. They hadn’t found the locket. But Jerry Grieder was guilty of burglary, that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Seventeen-year-old Jasmine Simmons had awakened in the middle of the night to see a man standing in a dark corner of her room, watching her. She’d screamed to holy hell, and the man had bolted from her room, shattered a window in a spare bedroom, and jumped through to the lawn below. She’d gone on screaming until the neighbors woke and raised the cry of thief.
A crowd gathered. Jacob and Deputy Ted Harris happened to be riding by and descended on Jasmine’s house. They found Jerry Grieder standing near the broken window, his clothes torn and his arms sliced up and bloody. He was even holding a shard of broken glass.
When asked what he was doing there, he’d muttered a half-baked excuse. When questioned further, he’d gone into a shell.
Jasmine, still a girl but living on her own for three years now, had claimed that he’d stolen her mother’s locket. A silver heart containing a cameo of her mother.
Jacob searched Jerry, but didn’t find the locket. The crowd searched the area, but they didn’t find it either.
Attempts to question Jerry further led to nothing. His rambling story was so full of holes and inconsistencies that it became obvious to everyone he was lying.
That certainty propelled Jacob forward. Feeling numb down to his toes, he led Jerry to the base of the fountain, turned him around so that the man’s back was to the Blind Lady of Justice, and backed away.
“Please don’t do this,” Amanda begged from somewhere off to his right. “Please, somebody make it stop. They didn’t even find the locket.”
Jacob pulled his weapon. It felt impossibly heavy in his hand, as if he could never lift it.
He looked around at the assembled faces, and saw nothing but stone statues staring back at him. The wind picked up, carrying the wood smoke smell of a nearby cooking fire. Somewhere far off, a dog barked. This was his town, his people. And they were about to compel him to do something truly awful.
“But no man can make you do something you don’t want to do,” Sheriff Taylor had said to him on the day he proclaimed him chief deputy. “You’ve been given this position because you’re capable of knowing your own mind, and being a man of conscience. Sometimes you will have to do that which nobody wants you to do. Sometimes, you will have to refuse that which everybody wants of you. It’ll be up to you to know what is right. And you will know, so long as you let the Code be your guide.”
The Code, thought Jacob. He cleared his throat and began to speak. His voice was loud and sounded remarkably clear and steady, free of the fear tearing him up inside.
“The Code speaks clearly on our role here today. Jerry Grieder, you have been found guilty of the crime of burglary. You have broken into the home of a fellow citizen with the intent to commit theft or assault. You are a thief, and a thief is a threat to the trust that protects and preserves us all.
“You have harmed our community by your actions. Our survival is always in doubt, and we must protect one another as neighbors, as friends, and as family. We must believe in each other. We must trust one another. And Jerry Grieder, we no longer trust you. To whatever god you worship, or code you follow, may it preserve you and offer safe passage for your soul. The sentence of death by firing squad will now be carried out. Is there anything you want to say?”
Jacob waited.
Jerry lifted his gaze to Jacob. There was no recognition in his bloodshot eyes, just panic and fear and misery. Then he looked past Jacob and scanned the assembled crowd until he found Amanda.
Then, much to Jacob’s surprise, Jerry managed a faint smile. “I love you, baby,” he said. “With all my heart.”
Several people were crying.
Amanda shouted, “You can’t do this to him. It isn’t right!”
A few people agreed with her and they yelled for mercy. But nobody else picked up the cry, and soon the square fell silent again.
Jacob stepped closer to Jerry, barely more than an arm’s length away. He thought again how horrible it was that Jerry wasn’t blindfolded. It certainly would have been easier on him to fire if he didn’t have to look the man in the eyes while he pulled the trigger. But that was the point, wasn’t it? The law was cold and absolute, but men mustn’t be. Men make laws to live by, and they should be man enough to face the consequences of those laws when the hard choices have to be made. It was an awful act, and an incredibly tragic one, which was why, Jacob figured, that more of the town hadn’t turned out for the execution.
Jacob raised his pistol and adjusted his grip.
From somewhere behind him Amanda screamed, “Oh, God, Jerry, I love you!”
Jacob told himself to do it. Wait any longer and he’d lose his nerve completely. His hands were slippery with sweat, and he had to adjust his grip on the weapon yet again. Then he squeezed the trigger, and the gun jumped in his hand.
He saw the flash. Jerry’s head snapped back, and he crumpled to the wet grass, his face turned to the sky, a nasty red hole where his right eye had been. Jacob swore silently. He’d been aiming for Jerry’s forehead. He’d intended something clean and quick. Not a horror show.
There was a sudden stench as Jerry’s bowels and bladder released. The grass beneath Jerry’s head turned dark.
A few people moaned, but the sound of their grief soon died away and the quiet crowd was left with nothing but the echo of the shot and the ragged sobbing of Amanda Grieder, now a widow.
Steve put a hand on his shoulder. “Lower your weapon,” he whispered.
Jacob did as the older deputy instructed, then holstered the gun. Dr. Gary Williams, the town’s only remaining properly trained doctor from the First Generation, stepped from the crowd and knelt next to the body. He checked for a pulse, and then pried open Jerry’s one remaining eye so he could study the pupil for any signs of dilation. If Jerry were going to rise, the first sign of it would be there, in the pupils.
To Jacob’s great relief, the doctor motioned for two of his apprentices to bring a blanket. They draped
it over Jerry’s ruined face and then Dr. Williams went over to talk with Sheriff Taylor. As the two men conferred in low tones, somebody led Amanda Grieder away.
They had two men and a horse-drawn cart standing by to remove the body to the crematorium, but Jacob didn’t stick around to watch that part of the process. He walked back to the constabulary office with his head wrapped in a haze. He was barely aware of his steps, and saw nothing but the scrap of ground directly in front of his feet. He went straight to the bathroom, collapsed to his knees in front of the toilet, and vomited.
4
It was almost dark when Sheriff Taylor finally came for him.
Randall Taylor was a legend around town. He had led the First Generation out of Arkansas and into Arbella, had rallied them at the barricades, and fought like a lion to beat back the tide of the dead. He was one of the authors of the Code, and the sentinel on the wall that kept the rest of the world at bay. Like his old friend Steve Harrigan, Taylor was a tall, slender man. But where Harrigan was known for his affable smile and endless parade of jokes, Taylor was a far more serious man. He said little when he didn’t have to, and looked on everything and everyone with a quiet intensity.
He had been, according to Jacob’s mother, quite good looking back in the day. Gray hair, wrinkles, and liver spots had erased some of that former glory, and his sharp, handsome features seemed more gaunt than rugged these days, but he was still obviously a powerful man, one who carried himself with a confidence that was immediately apparent to all who met him.
He leaned against the doorway of the bathroom, a matchstick tucked into the corner of his mouth. He pulled it out and held it up for Jacob to see. “Steve said you promised to talk to Frank Hartwell about getting more of these next time he’s outside the walls.”
Jacob looked at him, confused. The words made no sense to him.
He was still hugging the toilet, though he hadn’t thrown up again after that first time hours earlier. He stood up, lowered the lid, and sat down.
