by Turner, Ivan
"I'll put in a call to the CDC," he said finally. "At the very least, it will make them aware of a new disease."
"Is there anything else?" Heron asked.
Naughton shook his head. "You've been through enough. Why don't you take a load off while we wait for the test results?"
This time Heron shook his head. "I'm going to go and be with Stemmy."
At this, Luco looked up. There was an expression on her face that was both definable and yet indescribable at the same time. At that moment, Heron saw things through her eyes. He saw Zoe Koplowitz and Stemmy and he saw himself. He did not like what he saw.
"It could be a long wait, Anthony," Naughton said to him. "Are you sure you want to put yourself through that?"
"He shouldn't be alone."
Whether by design or instinct, the captain didn't even give consideration to the simmering Luco when he gave Heron his permission. There was really no other option. They were partners, Heron and Stemmy. They had been partners for years. They were friends.
***
HERON was given a folding chair and strict instructions to stay out of the room. Of course, he thought. I wouldn't want to get the zombie plague.
As he approached Stemmy's room he couldn't help but notice that the little girl was still curled up on the floor by the bed. She looked up at him as he passed, made that curious sniffing motion again. Heron shivered a bit, then moved past.
Stemmy was back in bed, seemingly asleep. Heron spied his phone on the nightstand.
"I'm with you, buddy," he whispered. "I'm with you."
He unfolded the chair and set it in front of the window. Sitting down, he put his head in his hands and began his long wait.
He didn't know how long it was before he looked up. He must have dozed off, Stemmy's presence bringing him slowly to wakefulness. The detective was standing up against the window, his hospital gown hanging oddly off of his frame, his IV stand tipped over on the floor behind him. The tube still trailed from his arm. Stemmy's head was cocked at an odd angle and his eyes seemed vacant.
Heron went cold.
"…anthony…"
The voice was so low that he wasn't sure he'd heard it.
"Stemmy?"
The eyes seemed to come back into focus beneath a film of sweat. His neck muscles bunched and he straightened. When Heron looked at him he saw pain. Agony.
"Stemmy…"
"…my family…"
Now he could see the lips moving, ever so slightly. Stemmy was still alive. There was still air in his lungs.
"I'll look after them," Heron promised.
Stemmy nodded, the tiny motion an exercise of will. "…more…"
"What? What more?"
Stemmy's eyes locked onto Heron as he summed up the very last of his reserves. "I don't want to be like that. You'll see to it."
"Like that? Like what, Stemmy?"
He cocked his head to the left. "Like her."
Heron looked over toward the little girl's room but she was no longer inside. She was right next to him, her eyes and nose focused on his living flesh. Her mouth opened and her rotting teeth gleamed in the half light. Heron let out a cry and toppled back and out of the chair. Somewhere an alarm was blaring.
He came to with a start, finding himself on the floor with the turned over chair next to him. There was no alarm blaring in his ear but there was something, a long steady whine. His heart was beating a mad rhythm in his chest and he had to look at the girl's room just to be sure. If she'd been in her regular position, he'd never have been able to see her from where he was. But she'd moved. She was now pressed up against the glass, looking directly at him. Her nose wasn't twitching anymore, as if she no longer needed to smell him to know that he was food.
Getting to his feet, he looked for the source of the whine. Stemmy still lay in his bed, his IV stand next to him and the monitor showing his flat line on the other side. There was the source of the whine. Johan Stemmy had passed.
Heron had moments to make his decision. He didn't have any idea how long it would take for Stemmy to pass from death into undeath but he knew that his monitor would alert Naughton and Luco. With the decision making power that had made him an effective police officer, he hit the button that broke the seals on the door and pushed his way into the room. Stemmy looked peaceful in death. There was still some sweat glistening in his hair and on his brow. Heron drew his gun, feeling silly aiming at a corpse. But he didn't hesitate. Whether subconsciously or in reality, he had made Stemmy a promise. He would never become one of those things.
The gunshot was loud in the closed space. Stemmy's head jerked to the side and his body twitched once as the bullet entered his brain, protecting him from the fate that had so terrified him in his last moments. The echo had not left the chamber when it was joined by an exasperated gasp from Denise Luco.
Naughton came in behind her, much more calm, as if he'd known all along that this would happen.
"Damn you! I needed to observe a subject turning."
"He's not a subject," Heron said with far less venom than he felt.
There was a moment of silence, but not for Stemmy. Everyone just breathed, Heron and Luco each trying to stare down the other. Under the circumstances, Luco never stood a chance.
"You'd better put that thing in a stronger cage," Heron said, jerking a thumb toward the other room. "And put a guard on it."
Naughton didn't say anything at first, seeing just how unnerved Heron was. "You'll go talk to Eileen?" he finally asked.
Calming down at the very relevant question, Heron nodded. Neither Naughton nor Luco even mentioned the results of his blood test. He supposed it really had been just a formality.
"Go home after that."
Heron picked up his phone from the nightstand, spared a glance for Luco, and left the room.
***
IT had taken Stemmy a long time to die and Heron, much to his own shame, had slept through most of it. The memory of those last moments still pulled at him. He could see Stemmy, clear as day, his body pressed up against the glass as he dictated his final wishes. And then there was the girl…the monster. She was right there and then she wasn't. Heron knew it was dream, the whole of it. Stemmy couldn't have picked up his IV and gotten back into bed so quickly. Not in his condition. And the thing. It would never have just gone back into its cage. So it was a dream. All of it. But it felt like a memory. And he had not made those promises to Stemmy in vain. Whether they had been asked or he had conceived them, Heron would honor the first and had honored the second because he knew it was what Stemmy would have wanted.
It was two o'clock in the morning.
It had taken Stemmy a long time to die.
When Heron arrived at his partner's brownstone, he hesitated outside the door. There was a soft glow coming through the glass in the front door. Of course, Eileen would be unable to sleep. He didn't know how long they had spoken for or what about but the battery on his cell phone was dead. He imagined her sitting in the kitchen, just the counter light on, sobbing at the loss of the man who had been more her partner than he could ever have been Heron's.
Stepping up to the door, he knocked lightly.
She came to the door in a rush, hoping, hoping. But when she saw him there, saw the disheveled and frightened look of him, she knew it was over. Tears burst from her eyes and she fell into his arms. Only now able to cry himself, Heron held his friend's wife. They shared their pain on the stoop until they could collect themselves. Then they laughed a little bit. They laughed together in Stemmy's memory. Finally, when they were drained of all emotions, they went inside and sat for a while.
***
THE dawn light was cresting when Anthony Heron finally reached his own home in Queens. He and his wife lived in a small two bedroom house with their daughter. Mellie was just five years old. She had creamy brown skin and thick tight hair with bouncing locks. She was his pride and joy. Alicia was a stern woman who expected more from him emotionally than she herself was wi
lling to give. But somehow it worked between them. Heron was never one to hold back and never one to demand more from a woman than she could give.
When he got home, Alicia was awake and had been all night. She was sitting at the table and there were tears in her eyes. It was only at that moment that he realized he had never called her. He had been gone all night and never even called to tell her why. She looked up at him with dark eyes. There was relief, followed by anger, followed by concern. She knew right away that some part of him was missing.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Stemmy," he told her. "Stemmy died."
"Oh, my God!" Her hands came to her face in a classic demonstration of shock and anguish. She came and embraced him and he held her tight more for himself than for her. He never really understood what she was feeling. Stemmy and Heron were partners. If something miniscule had gone differently, it could have been Heron who had died and not Stemmy. Alicia had loved Stemmy but she loved her husband more and all she could think about was just how close she had come to not having him anymore.
Heron pushed away from her and went to the kitchen. He filled a glass with water from the tap and sat at the table. There was some mail scattered about but he ignored it. What caught his eye was the phone message scribbled on a piece of yellow paper.
"What's this?" he asked.
Alicia, still badly shaken, said, "I'd forgotten. The doctor called. They have the results of your biopsy and they want you to come back in to discuss it."
Heron didn't even bother to react. The biopsy. It had seemed so important, dominated his thoughts up until the moment they had encountered the Koplowitz family. He thought of Stemmy and what he had gone through. He thought of Zoe Koplowitz, Dr. Luco's undead subject. Maybe cancer wasn't so bad. After all, there were worse fates, worse fates even than death.
***
THE coming of the zombies to the world is not necessarily the coming of the apocalypse. Shawn of the Dead is the first of a series of episodes that focuses on the more personal aspects of people as they face their regular lives against the backdrop of a zombie infection.
This first installment has introduced to several important characters and the disease itself. Unlike typical zombie stories, the world has not and does not come to a crashing end. The reality of plague involves humanity's attempt to control and eventually cure it. While researches stand at the front lines, regular citizens think very little of a war that is not at their doorstep. Their day to day lives and the problems that go with them are enough. Wives and husbands. Girlfriends and boyfriends. Children. School. Money. These are the things that occupy reality. And even with zombies marching the streets of the city and the country and the world, people will pay it no more mind than they do the news stories they hear on TV.
Next month, the zombie infection goes public as a hospital ER gets its first taste of the undead and the damage these slow and stumbling monstrosities can do. I hope you'll download Abby's Bad Day on the 25th of October.
Series 1 includes 10 episodes of Zombies, each published on the last Monday of every month through June. Though Shawn of the Dead was available for download free of charge, each other episode will cost 99 cents on smashwords.com. If you like it, and I hope you do, please continue reading so that I may continue writing. Please review it so that others can discover it.
Please enjoy it.
Thanks very much.
***
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Be sure to check out what happens when the Jury starts punishing people for their crimes in past lives and sets their sites on a rabbi who is believed to have been Adolf Hitler in The Book of Revelations, available for free on smashwords.
For an epic (and involuntary) journey through time at a breakneck pace, join Mathew Cristian as he narrates his adventures as a Forty Leaper. Forty Leap is available on smashwords. Read the first half for free.
Herman Delto is his own worst enemy. But is he also the worst enemy of the colonists he's led to a better world? Read Fast Forward, available on smashwords. Read the first half for free.
