Zombies! (Episode 7): Conflicts of Interest

by Ivan Turner

  ***

  WHEN Naughton gave Denise a kiss on the lips, she didn't respond. She was always uptight, but the tension had been mounting the last couple of weeks. Ever since the Zombie Rights Association had gone public and started accusing the researchers of torturing their subjects, she'd retreated further and further into her professional personality. It was at this point in a relationship that Naughton usually found his way out. Unfortunately, it was easy to extricate himself from a shallow relationship with a twenty year old. It was not so easy with Denise. If she was crazy it didn't have anything to do with immaturity or, well, shoes. She was a complex woman with complex scars. And he loved her.

  "Why are you here, Lance?" she asked.

  "Why do I ever come here?" he answered, with a grin.

  "Don't pull that shit with me. You just spent an hour staring at Todd Mayfield."

  "All right," he acquiesced. "So I'm looking a little deeper. Don't you get paranoid on me."

  She fell into a chair. It swiveled uncontrollably and almost upended her but she managed to regain her balance with only a modicum of indignity. "Then tell me."

  "Anthony's starting to doubt. He's seen some of the zombies display…discretion?"

  "I told him that there would be anomalies!"

  "Denise, you have to understand his position. His job is very difficult."

  "So is mine. I'm in here day after day, hour after hour trying to cure this thing and those fuckers are out there calling me a butcher. Goddamn it, Lance, they've compared me to Dr. Mengele."

  Getting down on one knee in front of her, he took her hands. She tried to pull away but he held on tight and forced her to look directly at him. "I know you're doing what you need to do, but maybe you shouldn't fight so much."

  "Don't patronize me."

  His eyes hardened and he squeezed her hands a little tighter. "If you want to pick a fight with me, you'd better think twice."

  For a second, a brief second, he saw her ego struggle for control. It cried out that he was daring her to fight with him and that she should rise to that challenge. But her rationale won out and she calmed. Then her walls came down entirely and she collapsed into his arms weeping.

  "I can't take it anymore," she sobbed. "They have to be dead. They have to be." He tried to soothe her but she just went on shuddering and shaking as she wept. "I've performed so many experiments."

  Pushing away, Naughton took her face in his hands and looked into her tear soaked eyes. "Do you believe they're dead."

  Slowly, hesitantly, she nodded.

  "Then they are." He stood up and brushed off his trousers. "Get yourself together and be ready to leave in a couple of hours."

  Now her angst turned to confusion. "Why? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong," he said with a smile. "I just thought we'd go away for a long weekend."

  ***

  AT around 4:50 pm, Abby made a decision to call Peter Ventura. Her work day was just about over and she was gathering up her things. Signaling Whitaker that she was going to leave momentarily, she went into the back room and pulled out her phone. After what had happened the other night, with the leaflets and the fire, she had sworn never to get involved with Peter and his group again. She also couldn't stand lying to Martin. But this was different. This wasn't an abandoned building where someone had thrown in a bunch of zombies. This was perverse. She knew she should be dialing Heron's number instead of Peter's and yet she couldn't bring herself to do it.

  "Abby!" Peter cried as he answered the phone. "My God, I'm glad to hear from you. I swear to you, I didn't set that fire."

  "Let's not start that again, Peter. I've found something new. Can you meet me here at the gym tomorrow night at five?"

  He was silent for a moment, no doubt wondering what to make of her sudden change of heart. Then, "Of course. Should I bring anything?"

  "No," she said. "This time, we'll decide what to do with this together."

  And, with that, she hung up. For some reason, Peter seemed intent on having her as part of his group. She didn't understand why. She didn't understand the respect she'd garnered from Heron either. Everyone seemed to think she was this exceptionally strong woman yet she always felt so weak. Regardless, if Peter was desperate for her company, then she would make him jump through hoops to have it. The rest of the group was a different story, but she couldn't worry about them at the moment.

  All the way home, she chewed on the information that John Arrick had given her. What would she do with that information? Obviously, she intended to go there. She wanted to see what it was all about before she actually made any decisions. Then she and Peter could figure out how to handle it. They could expose the location on their web site. Emily James, a young girl whose relationship with Peter was in question, had put together a very graphic and telling site. As Abby had suggested, the other members of the group had posted their horrible experiences but it hadn't been enough for Emily. She'd painted horrible pictures of zombies and the people who supported their "rights". It was founded on hate. That's what Abby saw when she viewed the site. She knew that, like the fliers they had posted on the safe houses, it would be more destructive than constructive. Perhaps that was why she had gone back to Peter. Perhaps she felt that she needed to take the reigns of his group so that they didn't get too far out of control. What qualified her for that job, she wondered?

  Martin had had the day off so supper was already brewing when she came through the door. She hated it when he cooked but that was one of those things you didn't tell your spouse. Whatever he was making smelled pretty good but it would either be too spicy or too bland. Oh well. She had other things on her mind. And they stayed on her mind all through dinner. She answered Martin's attempts at conversation with grunts or absent nods. Only when she started giving Sammy the same treatment, did Martin say something.

  "We should go out tomorrow night," he said. "We'll take Sammy somewhere fun and behave as a family for a change. All of this economy and zombie shit has us behaving like we're under siege. I won't have it anymore." He said it all with a tone of mock firmness.

  It was wasted on Abby. "I have to go out tomorrow night."

  "That's what I said," Martin answered, though the cheerfulness had gone from his voice.

  "You know what I mean."

  He glanced once at Sammy and saw that the boy was well occupied with a chicken nugget. "Where are you going?"

  Abby looked up at her husband and knew what she had to do. "I'm meeting with Peter."

  Slamming his hand on the table, Martin startled Sammy. "I knew it!" he shouted. "That's where you were last week, also. Weren't you?"

  Head down, she nodded.

  "God damn it, Abby, are you trying to get yourself killed? I saw the news the next morning. They said there were zombies in that burning building and I thought, God but I hope Abby wasn't there. But I knew better, didn't I?"

  "I'm sorry, Martin. I couldn't just sit by…"

  He glared at her. "So you burned down a building?"

  She shook her head. "No. God, no, Martin. All we did was post some fliers. I don't know who set the fire."

  "But you think it's unrelated?"

  "I don't know," she said, exasperated. Sammy looked up at them. "It's just so hard, Martin. The nightmares…"

  "It's no excuse, Abby. It's bad enough that you lied to me, but a man is dead because of what you did that night."

  "We didn't set any fire. We were just warning people."

  "And giving them an excuse to be destructive. Don't you think Peter was watching that news report with a smile on his face? There are consequences for everything, Abby. We have police for a reason."

  "I can't just do nothing, Martin. Those things will kill us all."

  "They're not going to kill us all. I understand what you went through, but…"

  "You don't understand!" She cried at him. "You weren't there, Martin. I know you were worried about me and you were worried about Sammy, but you weren't there. You can't know.
Karl was eating that nurse and she was eating that doctor. Then they ate that security guard and, oh God, Martin, what happened to Dr. Leke… We were so helpless. That feeling, the helplessness, it doesn't just go away. I have to face it. I have to fight back."

  Martin had nothing to say to that. Perhaps she was right. He didn't understand her pain. But that didn't excuse her actions. It didn't bring the dead firefighter back to life.

  He turned his head away. "What shall we do, then, Abby? Will you keep carrying on with Peter?"

  "I don't know," she said, standing up. She went over to Sammy and kissed him on the forehead. Then she went into the bathroom and cried in the shower.

  ***

  FRIDAY passed in the blink of an eye.

  Abby and Martin said nothing to each other as they each prepared for work and helped to prepare Sammy for his day at daycare. When she left, she didn't kiss him goodbye. He asked if she would be home so that they could go out and she said no. She apologized for it, but no it remained.

  John Arrick, feeling less and less like himself and more and more like an empty shell, taught his classes mechanically and spent his off periods staring blankly at the walls. It was fight night and he would have to go to the arena straight from work to prepare the zombies for combat. Marcus anticipated a sell-out crowd.

  Anthony Heron left his house early in the morning vowing that he would join his wife and daughter for dinner and a movie that night. He waited all day for Captain Naughton to return to his office with the court order that would force him to transfer Linda over to Arthur Conroy but Captain Naughton never showed.

  Marcus worked through his day content enough with his life and the decisions he'd made. The one that stung was Shawn. The poor kid lay on a cot, feverish. They had done well cleaning and dressing the wound. They had gotten the bullet out, though there would be scarring. But it was a weak later and Shawn wasn't showing any signs of getting better. PJ had told Marcus to just kill him and be done with it. But, through it all, Marcus loved Shawn. He knew it was over between them. But that didn't change things. If Shawn worsened, Marcus would find a way to get him to a hospital. Even if it meant closing up shop and disappearing forever. He would not let Shawn die.

  Peter Ventura worked a regular shift at the ER, his mind occupied with thoughts of what would be when he met up with Abby that night. He knew she was important to his movement. When he had met up with the likes of Melissa Benford and Emily James, he had fueled their hate and absorbed much of it. But Abby brought a sense of reason to everything. They needed her more than anyone else in the group including him.

  The sun dropped below the horizon and the cold night began. Those who craved the day found their ways indoors. Those who craved the night dressed for it and linked up with each other all over the city. Peter showed up at Push Ups at exactly five o'clock. He had Melissa Benford with him. Though she didn't show it, Abby wasn't happy. She was still unsure of the relationship between Peter and Melissa although she knew it had something do with Melissa's lost son Jason. In many ways the anger that radiated from Melissa was triple what she'd felt from Emily James. Emily's was more pronounced, more visible, but that had a lot to do with her age and her upbringing. Melissa, on the other hand, was an adult, used to hardship but accepting of the lifestyle it brought. When her son had been taken by the zombie plague, it had been life's scorn. It had instilled in her something new, something vicious.

  "Let's go have some dinner," Abby said.

  They went and sat at the same deli where she'd met John Arrick a week before. It was the same deli where a young woman had been killed by a zombie only minutes after Abby had left. She'd heard about it on the news, seen the police tape in front of the restaurant. She'd wondered if Arrick had been there during the attack. Now she was sure he had. Though he hadn't told her as much, there was something changed in him. It wasn't so much that he was losing himself, but that he was finding out he was someone completely different than he'd ever thought. And, she guessed, he didn't particularly like who he was. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

  Abby ordered her very favorite sandwich while Peter and Melissa ate light. Tonight, she was hungry. When the food arrived, she didn't pick at it as she had the week before. Carrying on with this group was causing her a lot of trouble with Martin, but in the end she felt it would be worth it. If she could get them to see reason.

  "We are not the police," she said to them at last. When neither of them had any idea how to respond to that, she said. "It's not our job to stop the zombies or to stop the Zombie Rights Association."

  "Someone has to," Peter interrupted.

  "But not us," Abby said quickly, then repeated, "We're not the police."

  "And what are they doing?"

  "Peter, if the police weren't doing their job, we'd have the apocalypse you're so afraid of. After three months of an infectious disease and the dead walking the Earth, here we are sitting in a restaurant and having a meal. I agree that someone needs to present a counterpoint to the ZRA. We can do that. We can do it through the web site. We can do it through protests. We can do it by working with the police whenever we discover something that needs to be dealt with."

  Peter shook his head. "I don't know, Abby. I think that decisive action…"

  "Decisive action doesn't have to be irresponsible. We posted those fliers without even thinking about the consequences."

  He turned his head away. Melissa, still silent, kept looking at Abby, waiting for more.

  Finally, Abby pulled out the business card Arrick had left with her. "I think we should go here tonight."

  Melissa took the card. For no apparent reason, she looked at the front, then flipped it over. There was a time and an address. Nothing more. "What's this?"

  "Zombie fights."

  Peter looked back at them and snatched the card from Melissa.

  "You mean they put two zombies in a ring and see if they'll fight?" Melissa asked.

  But Abby shook her head. "That's not the impression I got. It's more like they put one man in a ring and he fights the zombie."

  Already, she could see the anger creeping over Peter's face. He was remembering being trapped in the ER, fighting zombies for his life. What would it be like to get into a ring and fight them? Who would do that by choice?

  "We've got to stop this," he said.

  Gently taking the card back from him, Abby said. "We've got to see it. Someone else can stop it."

  "The police?" Peter mocked. "They've probably got guys running the betting table."

  "I doubt it," Abby answered. "What you don't know, Peter, is that I happen to be a personal friend of the head of the police department's zombie task force."

  ***

  IT was going to be a good night. Their best yet. Marcus stood just outside his office and leaned over the railing. From his vantage point he could see the ring and almost the whole of the arena. Arrick had just started bringing in the zombies. There were twenty two good ones this time. Two nights before, PJ had reported another safe house. Arrick had gone down there and bound and gagged a whole bunch of zombies all on his own. Then he'd called Marcus who'd sent transport. This was the first time that Marcus wasn't worried about not having enough zombies and especially not having enough good ones. Arrick's involvement in the enterprise was well worth the wad of cash he'd handed him this evening as he'd come in. At least that had seemed to brighten the normally brooding Scot.