by Turner, Ivan
"What's this all about?" he said gruffly, as if he couldn't be bothered with two policemen in the middle of the day. The super was in his late fifties or maybe even his early sixties. He wore a checked shirt over some old carpenter's pants. There was a large ring of keys dangling from his belt loop which Stemmy found to be both cartoonish and out of place. He had three days' worth of grey stubble on his face and a perpetual scowl. The scowl did not alter when they explained why they were there.
"I doubt the missus is home," the super said. "She's got some kind of high power job in the city."
Stemmy glanced at Anthony. There had been no missing person's report matching Koplowitz's description or identity. They had assumed he lived alone. The existence of a wife who had not shown the usual signs of concern was a bad omen.
"Do you have a key to that apartment, sir?" Anthony asked.
"Of course!" The super was already leading them into the elevator. The three men said nothing to each other during the short ride up.
They stepped out of the elevator into a brown carpeted hallway. Here, too, the walls were in need of repainting and the window at the end of the corridor was grimy. Stemmy wondered how the tenants tolerated it. If he was paying the price of a Brooklyn rental, he would be a lot more vocal about the condition of his building.
"It's that one there," the super said as he pulled the key off his ring.
Stemmy put a hand out to halt him while Anthony approached the door, the third from the end, and knocked. When there was no reply, he called out. "Mrs. Koplowitz, are you home? This is Detective Anthony Heron of the NYPD. We need to speak with you regarding your husband."
There was still no answer.
"Told you," the super said.
"Can you open it up, please?" Anthony asked. He looked at Stemmy, who'd gone white as a ghost. It was on both of their minds. There was a man whose time of death preceded the event by ten to twelve hours. They couldn't escape the meaning of it no matter how unreal it sounded.
As soon as the super had the door open, the smell wafted into the hallways.
"What the hell is that?" he said angrily, wondering about the cleaning up he would have to do. He moved to march right inside and find the source but Anthony put a strong hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. One look at their two faces quelled any defiance the super might have felt rising.
The interior of the apartment was dark, all of the shades pulled. There was a table and a lamp right next to the door and Anthony switched it on, bathing the room in dim light. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The door opened up into a small entryway that became the living room. A couch was out in the middle of the room, facing their left, with a long table behind it. Pictures sat on the table, one of them knocked over. The TV was across from the couch with a DVD rack next to it. There was an easy chair on the far side of the coffee table and just behind that was the kitchenette. An opening led into darkness to the right of the kitchen.
The smell was awful. There was no doubt that something dead was in that apartment.
"Wait out here," Stemmy said to the super as he moved in behind Anthony. They both drew their weapons.
"Mrs. Koplowitz," Anthony called. "Are you there, ma'am?"
Even in the face of the undead, Anthony was polite.
"What do you think?" Stemmy whispered, beginning to sweat.
"I think she's probably laying in the bedroom or the bathroom dead," Anthony whispered back. "If he was eating people, God knows what she'll look like now."
"What if she's like him?" Stemmy asked. "What do you think about that?"
"I don't want to think about that."
But they were both thinking about it. You didn't move cautiously through an apartment, checking under tables and into corners with your gun drawn if you weren't worried about being attacked. Stemmy looked back once to make sure the super wasn't coming in and was relieved to find that he wasn't. Apparently the detectives' apprehension was infectious. All manner of surliness had gone out of the poor old super and he just stood in the doorway, protected by the light of the hallway behind him.
There was a switch on the wall between the kitchenette and the hallway that led deeper into the apartment. Stemmy prayed that it would light up the place better as he reached for it. But he froze in mid stride as a soft moan drifted from out of that darkened passage. It had the pitch of a woman's voice but the tenor of a rush of air through an empty tunnel. Stemmy was close to the hallway, not yet close enough to reach the switch but close enough that the odor tripled inside of his nostrils.
"Stemmy, back up," Anthony said and Stemmy obliged.
A shadow appeared. From that shadow reached an arm. The hand gripped the corner of the wall inches from the light switch. The fingers were a woman's fingers but cold and grey.
"Mrs. Koplowitz?" Anthony stammered.
Stemmy gave him a look.
As she came into the light, such as it was, they could see that there was no Mrs. Koplowitz in that body. She swayed and stumbled a bit, the eyes glassy. Her face was drawn, the skin hanging off of the skull like a shirt that almost but doesn't quite fit. She didn't seem to see the two detectives and yet had clearly come out in response to their presence. One leg was turned at an odd angle but not broken. It looked as if she didn't quite know how to use it. Aside from the rigor, there wasn't a mark on her. There were no wounds and no blood. Unless zombies had somehow learned to wash up she hadn't eaten anyone. And it didn't seem as if Larry had been responsible for her death.
There was a strangled curse from the super behind them but both detectives were too preoccupied with the thing in front of them to look.
"Shoot it," Anthony whispered despite the fact that he had his gun out and aimed.
"I can't just shoot her," Stemmy whispered back. "Maybe they can help her."
At that, Mrs. Koplove seemed to finally notice the detectives, Stemmy in particular. Her head shot up and she lunged. She was clumsy and weak but she was only a few feet from him. Both policemen fired at once. Anthony's shot took her in the shoulder. Stemmy's hit her full in the chest. She lurched backward trying in vain to make good use of her legs. Only the wall, so close to her, kept her from falling to the floor. With her dead hands, she gripped it, the paint scraping clean under her fingernails. It took all three of them a moment to recover, the officers only a bit quicker than the zombie. The shot to the shoulder seemed to have no effect at all. She could still use the arm. From the chest wound oozed an odorous blackened substance. It didn't look like blood and it didn't smell like blood. It had the consistency of old motor oil, the kind you should have changed a year before.
Stemmy uttered a curse and shot her in the head.
This time she dropped and did not rise.
Only now did Anthony turn to look back at the super. He was still standing where they had left him, the look of terror on his face indescribable. He didn't move and didn't utter a sound. The leg of his pants was wet.
When he turned back, holstering his weapon at the same time, Stemmy was prodding the body with a broomstick.
"Be careful!" Anthony hissed.
"'I don't believe it," Stemmy was muttering. "I just don't…"
Stemmy's statement was cut off by his strangled cry as something tugged on the leg of his pants and then bit clean through. He dropped the broomstick as he turned. At his feet, crouched like a panther and gnawing on his calf was a little girl. She may have been eight years old with little blond curls. He knew then that he had missed it. He had seen it and he had missed it. There were pictures all over the apartment. Pictures of Larry and his wife and their daughter.
Anthony came up quickly and kicked the little girl in the head. He didn't even think twice about kicking this child. She literally flew away from Stemmy and collided with the wall. In an instant, Anthony had the broom in his hand and was roughly pushing her back into the hallway. As he followed her, his eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was a bathroom coming up on the left. Quickly switching his grip, he took
her full in the middle with the broom itself and swept her deep into the room. She fell and he used the opportunity to grab the door handle and pull it shut. He was already on the phone as he went back to his partner.
Stemmy had made it to the couch. He'd grabbed up a pillow and was using it to staunch the blood flow. All that he could think about was that infection and Shawn Rudd saying She was bit. 'S only a matter of time after that. The leg ached but it wasn't the fiery pain that he expected. He thought he might be going into shock. He saw Anthony with the phone but couldn't hear what he was saying over the rush of blood in his ears. Oddly enough, his powers of observation, those powers that had failed him moments ago, returned in spades. The super was gone, only a small puddle left in his wake. There was another person there, an elderly woman just poking her head in, covering her mouth as she saw what she saw. Anthony screamed at her and his screams were like those in a pool of deep water. But all of that was outside this world. Inside this world was the life of Larry Koplowitz and his family. There was his wedding picture; they looked so happy. Then there was one of he and Mrs. Koplowitz. Her belly was huge, the little girl inside almost ready to come out. Larry looked happy in that picture but the missus looked like she was just ready to give birth already. He remembered Eileen when she'd been that big. It was something the first time. But by the fourth time she didn't even put up the pretense of civility. That was when Stemmy had known she was having their last child. And he'd so wanted a son. But instead he'd had four daughters, four wonderful pearls of nature.
I'm never going to see them again.
He felt the pillow being ripped away and looked up to see Anthony with a frosted plastic bottle. All at once, his partner was pouring the contents of that bottle over his exposed muscle…
…and he screamed!
Somewhere in the corner of his mind, he heard himself mutter, "Does alcohol cure a zombie bite?"
Time must have passed because there were more cops now. They were in uniform and Anthony was giving them orders. To tell the truth, he wasn't just giving them orders. He was shouting at them. He took one small rookie and shoved her hard in the direction he wanted her to go.
Paramedics came in and began to dress the wound. They wore latex gloves as they worked which was an important thing. Maybe the bite wasn't the only way the zombie disease was spread. After all, poor Mrs. Koplowitz hadn't had a mark on her. The paramedics gave him a shot and he knew he'd been sedated. Normally he would have protested but he wasn't given the choice and he was too tired from the screaming to really care. As the blackness swept in, Stemmy was grateful. The sedation would save him from the tears that were finally starting to form in the wells of his eyes.
***
SHAWN'S arraignment hadn't gone well. The public defender had seemed competent but inexperienced. The assistant DA had torn him a new one and the result was that Shawn was held without bail.
At least they gave him his own cell.
When an officer came to escort him out, he was curious. All the officer would say was that he had a visitor. Now Shawn didn't know anything about prison but he was pretty sure they would have told him if it was visiting hours. Cuffing his hands, they led back out the way he came in, then down a long corridor into a part of the building he hadn't seen. There were small rooms here, interrogation rooms. He had a momentary bout of panic as the officer showed him into a bare grey room with a one way glass window. There was a table with a chair at either end. Shawn was ushered to far side of the table and told to sit.
He didn't recognize the detective who came to see him right away. After all, he'd had limited exposure to the two cops who'd questioned him when he'd killed those two zombies. And this guy did not look the way he had on that day. The first thing that Shawn noticed was that his confidence was shot. This detective had been tall and strong. He was good looking, too, with thick arms and powerful legs. Out of the two of them, he was the good cop. He was the one who spoke because the other would probably just piss you off. But now his posture was slumped and his eyes were sunken. There was a brown spot on his white shirt that could have been chili sauce. But it could have also been blood. The jacket of his suit was missing. His tie knot was down.
Why would he come to see me? Shawn wondered until, just a split second later, it came to him.
"Do you remember me?" the detective asked as he took a seat at the plain table between them.
Shawn nodded. "Didn't catch the name, though."
"Heron."
"Right. Where's the other one, the white guy?"
"Surgery."
"Tough break."
"How did you know?"
Shawn's brow came down over his eyes. "Know what?"
"There are no such things as zombies!"
Shawn shrugged. "There are now." But he thought about the question. He hadn't even questioned it when he'd seen the zombie heading down the street. Maybe it had something to do with his age. Kids are always expecting something they see in the movies to become real. Adults are too colored by their experience. They're less likely to believe what's right in front of their eyes if it doesn't fit into the picture of the world they've grown accustomed to.
"And the woman? Why did you kill the woman?"
Shawn threw his hands in the air. "I told you, man. She was bit. There wasn't…"
Silence fell over the room as the two looked at each other. Detective Heron's face never changed but Shawn felt himself lose a shade of color. What he felt in his gut now stomped on his earlier panic at being led to an interrogation room.
"You seen more? Are you bit?"
The cop lowered his eyes. "My partner."
Shawn breathed a little easier. "Tough break, man."
The cop looked back up. There was fire in his eyes now. "This isn't some god damned movie! And it certainly isn't the end of the world. He's in a hospital right now, in surgery. There are doctors who can help him. And if you'd had a brain in your head, you would have realized that and left that woman alone."
Shawn didn't have anything to say. It was a thought that had occurred to him over and over again in the past twenty four hours. Clearly the zombie apocalypse had not come. Outside the walls of this prison there were people doing their jobs and going to school and meeting for lunch. He thought about Marcus often, a hot fire in his gut.
The detective seemed finished with him then, his point made. He stood up and knocked on the door. When the officer opened it for him to leave he turned back to Shawn and said, "When they ask you why you killed that woman you say you were scared."
Shawn pursed his lips and blew. "I ain't scared of nothin'."
"You say it, Shawn," the detective told him. "You tell them you were scared of the end of the world."
***
IT was getting close to dinner time when Heron got back to the Manhattan hospital where Stemmy had undergone surgery. He was out and had been moved to recovery in an isolation ward. They wouldn't tell him where so, despite three cigarettes on the way over, he started to throw a tantrum. It wasn't a childlike kicking and screaming tantrum, though. It was more of an adult shouting and threatening tantrum. When the people at reception had had enough of him, they made a phone call and asked him to wait.
He gave them exactly two minutes.
Captain Lance Naughton appeared from one of the many exiting hallways and walked right up to Heron. Naughton wasn't the kind of guy that just appeared places. If he was there, the situation was serious. He had his hands up in the air before Heron could say anything and beckoned him away from the room full of people staring at him.
"I hear you went to see Shawn Rudd," Naughton said as they passed radiology.
Heron shivered.
