Zombies! Episode 1 - Shawn of the Dead

by Turner, Ivan

"Yeah," the detective said.

  "Did he say anything useful?"

  Heron shook his head.

  "Listen to me, Anthony. Stemmy's still a little groggy but he's awake. We've got him quarantined because the doctors found a rampant bacterial infection on the wound. It seems to be spreading."

  Heron went cold inside. All he could think about was the face on that little girl. Eight years old with cute blond curls and a death mask of a face, all grey skin and bugged out eyes. Was that what was going to happen to Stemmy?

  Naughton turned them into a short passageway that ended in a metal door with a keypad and a buzzer. The captain hit the buzzer and waited for the door locks to click. He then pushed his way through and Heron followed.

  Behind the door was a staircase that led down into the basement of the hospital. The lighting was good for a stairwell. Heron wasn't sure but he felt like they went down at least three flights. At the end was another door with another keypad/buzzer set up. Naughton repeated the process and led the detective into the isolation area. It was darker in here than outside. The labs were well lit but the passages were dim. Inside the rooms he could see various people at work. Most of them gave the two police officers barely a glance as they passed through. Eventually they reached yet another door. This time it opened with just a push of Naughton's hand. In here were the patient rooms. Though there were large windows through which one could see in, the rooms were sealed tight. Naughton stopped.

  "Stemmy's at the end of the hall. Don't go in the room."

  Heron nodded.

  "And, Anthony, the little girl is in the room next to Stemmy. We need her…it…the way it is."

  Heron nodded again.

  Naughton turned and left him.

  Heron took a deep breath before he started down that passageway. There were rooms on either side of him. He could see through the glass into the enclosure. There was a bed and a nightstand and a TV. There was an adjoining bathroom. A large drawer was set below the viewing window. It was hermetically sealed at both ends and could be used for transferring meals or what not. That way people didn't have to put on biohazard suits all of the time.

  The empty rooms passed out of his vision on either side as he marched. He stopped when he got to the little girl's room. He didn't even know her name. Turning his head, he looked inside. He didn't want to but he couldn't help himself. She was curled up on the floor but seemed to sense him. Looking up, he could see the hunger in her eyes. She was still unmarked, though there was dried blood around her mouth. Stemmy's blood. They stared at each other for a few moments, the living and the undead. She didn't move but he could see the minute wriggling of her nose. She was sniffing the air, looking for him. She knew he was there but she couldn't smell him and it confused her.

  At that moment, he could no longer think of her as a little girl. He felt no pity for this poor child whose abominable fate had been sealed by some unknown plague. This creature had bitten and infected his good friend. What would happen now?

  Heron moved on.

  Stemmy was in the bed, his injured leg wrapped up and elevated, an IV tube leading from his left arm to a bag on a stand. The bag was filled with a yellowish liquid. On the other side was a monitor with wires that snaked down and disappeared beneath his gown. Stemmy looked up, also sensing Heron's presence. He looked okay.

  "Anthony."

  He sounded like crap.

  "How're you feeling?" Heron asked before he could stop himself.

  With some effort, Stemmy raised himself to a sitting position. He was still groggy from the anesthesia. "Yeah, I'm okay. Leg hurts like hell."

  Heron nodded, not knowing what to say.

  "They've got someone next door. I heard movement, scratching. Is it…her?"

  Heron nodded again.

  Stemmy shook his head. "I don't remember much. The last thing I remember is shooting that woman in the head. But I have flashes of the pictures all around the apartment and I know the girl bit me."

  Heron said nothing.

  Stemmy got out of bed and hobbled forward. He forgot the IV stand and had to go back for it when the tube tugged on the needle in his arm. When the same thing happened with the monitor he yanked it forward by the wires in frustration. He came right up to the glass and pressed his face against it, craning to see into the next room. But, of course, he had no view of the zombie inside.

  "That's what's going to happen to me, isn't it?" he asked.

  Heron said nothing.

  Stemmy nodded to himself. Then he looked up at Heron. There was a lot to say and he wanted to say it all. But none of it came. "You don't let that happen, hear?"

  Heron said nothing.

  Stemmy nodded again, this time to his partner.

  They stood silently for a while. Finally, Stemmy asked, "Did anyone call Eileen?"

  "I don't think so."

  "It's getting late. Have you got your phone on you? They took mine."

  Heron reached into his pocket and pulled out the cell. Surprisingly, he had a decent signal. He guessed they'd installed relays into the superstructure. Pulling out the drawer, he dropped the phone inside and then pushed it through. Stemmy retrieved it on his end and then started back for the bed.

  "I'll give you some privacy," Heron said.

  "Thanks."

  Heron hesitated a moment. Then he turned and went back out the way he'd come. This time he did not look at the little girl.

  ***

  EILEEN sounded frantic when she answered the phone despite the fact that it wasn't really that late; he'd missed dinner. Stemmy had maneuvered himself back over to the bed so he could rest comfortably while speaking with her. He didn't want her to hear the pain. He didn't want her to hear the fear.

  "Eileen," he said.

  "Oh, my God. It's you. When I saw Anthony's number I didn't know what to think."

  He winced. "Look," he said and could sense her relief was washing away. "I'm not going to be able to come home tonight." Before she could ask, he began to explain. "Anthony and I tracked down the identity of that guy, the zombie guy. He had a wife and a little girl and they were both…well…I was bitten."

  "Bitten?" She seemed so confused. "Bitten by what?"

  "By the girl. The little girl bit me. She's a zombie."

  "Johan, you're not making any sense. What do you mean she's a zombie. You mean she's sick?"

  He breathed. "I mean she's dead and she bit me and now I'm locked up in quarantine."

  "Quarantine? Are you sick?"

  He hesitated, not sure what to tell her. He could feel his body fighting the infection. He could feel it losing.

  Eileen's breath became heavy and ragged then. He started to say her name but she cut him off. "Aren't there doctors? Can't they do something?"

  "They're trying."

  "Trying? That's it? Where are you, Johan?"

  "It's not important."

  "It damned well is! I need to be with you."

  "Eileen!" he shouted, frustrated. "You can't come here. You just…you just can't, okay?"

  "What am I supposed to do, then? What do I do now?"

  "I'm sorry, Eileen. I'm so sorry."

  "You're sorry? Tell that to your four daughters! You tell them you're sorry."

  "Please…"

  "How many times did I tell you to give up that job? You could've retired years ago but you had to go on…"

  "Eileen, don't do this!" he cried.

  And then he cried.

  And then she cried.

  They spent long minutes crying together before Eileen finally pulled it together and pulled him together. "What else is there to say, then?"

  He breathed. "Can we just talk like we always did? Can you tell me about the bills or the kids or maybe we can just reminisce a while?"

  She started off tentatively, just mentioning the high electric bill and how it was definitely Lucia's fault because she was always on the computer. He agreed and promised to have a talk with her but then caught himself up. They tried
like that for a while and then settled into the talking about the past. Talking about the past was easy. They'd had such good times together. It put him at ease to sort out the memories of his life with Eileen. It made the hurt in his leg and his heart go away for just awhile. So they talked and they laughed and they cried. And every time there was a lull in the conversation, one of them was quick to pick up the slack and make sure no one remembered why he'd really called.

  They did that until the battery in Anthony's phone started to give off warnings. After that they said their goodbyes together and hung up so that they could each weep in private.

  ***

  HERON lingered outside the door to the ward a moment, wondering whether to search out the captain or just wait for Stemmy to finish. He thought about his partner's situation and how he would act under the same circumstances. What would he say to Alicia if he was in Stemmy's place? He couldn't even fathom.

  With these thoughts in his head, he chose to look for the captain. Standing alone outside the ward would just force him to dwell on it and that wouldn't do. Stemmy was going to need him.

  At first he walked back the way he had come. Most of the laboratories were empty now. He passed a janitor and asked him if he'd seen Captain Naughton but the janitor either didn't know who the captain was or didn't speak English. As he walked, he marveled at the complexity of the installation. It was almost entirely self-contained and he was sure that it was outfitted with a top of the line lock-down mechanism. He wondered what it would be like to be trapped down there for an indefinite period of time, trying in vain to unriddle a deadly plague. He supposed it would be better than being trapped outside.

  At long last, he found someone who could lead him to the captain. The man was a lab technician, working late on something. He was young, but looked old. He wore a grizzled beard and sported a significant paunch. He didn’t know the captain but was sure that any police officer, especially a high ranking police officer, would be in the company of Dr. Luco.

  The technician showed Heron to a series of examination rooms and then left him after indicating one toward the end of the corridor. As the detective made his way down the hall, he could hear Naughton's distinct voice.

  The examining room was small but it had been set up as a makeshift lab as well. Naughton was sitting in a low chair, his legs spread out in front of him. He held a phone to his ear and was talking into it a little too loudly. Standing, looking into a microscope, trying her best to ignore the captain, was a fortyish woman in a white coat. She had her long brown hair tied back into a pony tail and was scribbling into a pad with her left hand. Heron noticed that she was writing in the pad without even looking at it and yet doing so flawlessly.

  Naughton waved as Heron walked in and then flashed him the one-minute finger. Heron stood in the doorway waiting. After a minute, Naughton was still talking but the woman finally looked up and took notice of him.

  "Are you detective Heron?"

  He nodded.

  She looked once at Naughton then beckoned him outside.

  "Denise Luco," she introduced, extending a hand.

  He nodded, accepting the hand but saying nothing.

  "I need to run a blood test on you," she said. "We've tested everyone who was in that apartment and everyone who's come into contact with Detective Stemmy. So far no one's shown any signs of the infection, not even the surgical team, but we're not taking any chances."

  Heron was still in mild shock, still absorbing the existence of zombies and the fact that one had bitten his good friend and partner. He didn't immediately reply to Dr. Luco. And she was not a particularly patient woman.

  "Detective? Did you hear me?"

  He sort of snapped out of it, found himself irritated by her demeanor. "What's going to happen to Stemmy?" he asked.

  At this she balked. "Well…he was infected by the bite. We've tried using a large dosage of IV antibiotics but the infection seems resistant. At this point, it's really up to his body's ability to fight off the infection."

  She was saying that there was nothing they could do.

  "Will he end up like that thing that bit him?"

  Slowly, she nodded.

  "How? How does that happen?"

  Dr. Luco began to wring her hands. Heron could tell that he was making her uncomfortable, which was something he didn't normally do. His strength had always been putting people at ease so that they would communicate. It was how he had managed to win Alicia's affections. But now his emotions were so erratic and their levels so high that there wasn't anything he could say or do to put people at ease.

  "We don't know all that much about it yet. It's aggressive, breeding at several times the rate of natural bacteria…"

  "Wait, wait. You mean someone made this?"

  She nodded. "It has all the telltale signs of having been created in a lab."

  Great! "Bio terrorism?"

  She shrugged. "That's your job, detective."

  "Can you help them, the zombies? Can you turn them back?"

  She shook her head again, this time sadly. "The few tests we've been able to run on Zoe Koplowitz indicate that she's dead. Even if we were able to purge the infection from her body, it would just leave her…inanimate."

  At that moment, Naughton stuck his head out the door and apologized for being on the phone. Luco and Heron moved into the room so the three of them could speak. Heron sat on the examining table while Luco prepared a syringe and a tube for his blood test.

  "It's just a precaution, Anthony," Naughton told him.

  "Dr. Luco explained it to me," he answered.

  Naughton nodded solemnly. "Did she explain the nature of the illness to you?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm very sorry, Anthony. I wish there was more that we could do."

  "You should test everyone in the apartment building. You should test everyone at the gym."

  This time Naughton shook his head. "We can't mandate the testing without a state of emergency and we don't have near enough of a problem to warrant that."

  "Did you check with other police forces around the country?"

  "For zombies?" the captain declared incredulously. "If the mayor caught wind of it, or God forbid the governor…"

  Heron interrupted him smoothly. "We need to do the right thing here, Lance. This plague may not be airborne but it still has a very effective way of travelling from person to person. And the Koplowitz family didn't get the disease from a bite. They got it from each other and one of them got it from somewhere else. That means it's out there and this blood test (accentuated by the fact that Dr. Luco was just then sticking the needle into his arm) is more than just a precaution."

  Lance Naughton leaned back and thought for a moment. There was silence as Dr. Luco finished the test and took the vial of blood back to her microscope.

  Naughton wasn't a stupid man but he'd never had the sense to be a really good detective. Like Heron he had people skills. Solid if not spectacular police work had earned him the respect of his peers. Savvy had gotten him the rest. Not that he didn't deserve it. Naughton didn't lose any sleep at night wondering if he was truly cut out for the job. He could very effectively lead and had won the respect of most of those underneath him as well as the press that hounded him.