by Joshua Guess
“What am I seeing here?” Kell asked Emily, who had a vaguely smug look on her face.
“That's their wall,” she said, jerking a thumb at the twelve feet of vines in front of them. “Somewhere inside that is pavement broken down to the dirt. There's reinforced chain link shaped into an inverted V. They grew all this shit on top of it. Through it, too.”
A resonant clang sounded in one of the buildings engulfed by the vines, prompting Emily to raise a hand in warning. “They know we're here. Do not touch a weapon.”
With little more than a whisper, a heavy steel door set into the building on the right swung open. A small woman carrying a submachine gun stepped out. Though the weapon was slung comfortably low and in their direction, she seemed at ease. Even if her finger was laid straight out next to the trigger guard.
“Hey, Emily,” the woman said. “Didn't expect you back so soon.”
“Shelly,” Emily said by way of greeting. “Told you I had a doctor interested in those people I met up with. This is him.”
Kell nodded. “Ma'am.”
Shelly smirked. “Politeness. Almost forgot what that's like. Come on in, all of you. Never know what might bite out here.”
They followed the guard through the door. It was a narrow space, at least for Kell and Mason. Their shoulders brushed the walls and ducking was not optional. The concrete walls were fairly new, not more than a few years old. Custom entrances. Kell would have figured that out from the three right-angle turns they had to make and the complete lack of any doors or windows.
The group moved down a steep set of concrete steps, through another twisting maze of corners, and up another set of steps to emerge inside Trenton itself.
Sure enough, there weren't any other guards to meet them. The land here was less flat than Kell would have expected Illinois, sculpted earthen terraces jutting out from gently sweeping hills. Everywhere he looked, food was growing. There were only narrow paths between the vast swaths of fruits and vegetables. In the far distance, a giraffe was eating from a tree.
“Wait a second, that's a giraffe,” Kell said flatly.
After a full beat, the entire group erupted into laughter.
“No, seriously,” Kell said, trying to edge a word into the gales of mirth. “Guys. Either I just had a stroke or that's a fucking giraffe!”
“Sorry, man,” Emily said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It was just the way you said it. So deadpan.”
Rational Kell noted that none of his group were looking at him like he was crazy, so he assumed what he was seeing was real.
“So what's the deal with this place?” Kell asked. “Why...where...” For once, words failed him. It was just too surreal to allow for logical thought.
Emily was still the only member of the group capable of speaking, though the laughter had died down to fits and bursts with the occasional chuckle bubbling up. “You can ask the big man when we see him. All new visitors are required to.”
There were some answers to be found along the way to the house of Trenton's leader, a man everyone simply referred to as Victor. Faded signage made it clear the place had once been a zoo, though that only raised more questions in Kell's ever-curious brain. Why move into a place that had been designed for ease of access, for one. It seemed like the last kind of refuge for safety.
That was what he thought at first, anyway. The walk also revealed some clever adaptations by the residents. Zoos worked hard to hide the concrete enclosures from their visitors to create a more natural appearance. The residents of Trenton took the opposite approach, removing large sections of soil from the edges of those hidden bunkers and outfitting them with custom defenses. One of the monkey pits featured two barred doors set in one side of its circular wall, both ringed with spears of steel and pit traps.
Kell wondered if the place was like some of the larger amusement parks he'd been to, with an entire network of connected tunnels and rooms below ground. If so, this place was more of a fortress than almost anywhere he'd seen since The Fall began.
“Here we are,” Emily said a short time later, leading them up a short and steep path to what had once been a gorilla habitat. So the sign said.
Kell once again revised his assumption when the door opened, spotting a large ape lounging on a fallen log behind a thick sheet of glass. The building itself was lived-in to an almost pathological degree. Clothes dried on lines strung from wall to wall, books stood in neat stacks next to every chair. A small camp grill sat beneath a makeshift stovepipe, surrounded by a surprising array of food, spices, and condiments. Kell eyed a jar of homemade pickles greedily.
“Hello,” said a resonant voice from the dimmer recesses of the room. “Let me get this thing going, hang on.”
Light bloomed in an old-fashioned oil lamp as sparks met wick, bathing a man's face in soft yellow light. He sat behind a table that served as a work desk, and leaned forward to take in the approaching group with intelligent eyes.
Survival in the long term meant cultivating an ability to trust your instincts and take the measure of a person quickly. Usually this meant observing a little, seeing how someone spoke to others and gauging them on things like body language.
Victor was much easier to figure out.
The light played across his face and threw stark shadows over the deep lines of it. He wasn't a young man, probably in his late forties or early fifties, and not without signs of hard living. A few of those lines were scars, too obvious to be surgical in nature but too clean to be anything other than knife wounds. They complimented a nose broken at least twice, judging by its crooked lean.
His eyes measured the group unabashedly, without fear or worry. This was a man who spent his days making decisive calls about who constituted a threat. Kell was reminded of nothing so much as a great jungle cat as Victor scanned them, then wondered if the guy was hiding tigers or something.
“Oh, you're injured,” Victor said, gesturing at Kell's arm. “Make yourselves comfortable. Grab chairs if you like.”
Kell took the warm tone and words at face value, dragging a chair and pulling it roughly in front of the desk. He was aware of Victor's eyes on him the entire time, measuring. Weighing. In itself the watchful gaze wasn't sinister, just a reflexive survival mechanism. The same one Kell had indulged in a minute earlier.
“Emily and I spoke the last time she was here,” Victor said once everyone was settled. “She explained that your group has managed to gather a few scientists who have been trying to come up with a cure.” His eyes rested on Kell. “I'm assuming that's you, otherwise you wouldn't have risked the trip while injured.”
Kell nodded but remained quiet, opting to err on the side of appearing meek.
“As I told Emily before, I have no problem giving you free run of the place. My people are free to talk to you, give you whatever samples, or leave with you.” He paused and scanned their faces, but when he continued his voice was just as pleasant and even. “However, if any of them choose not to speak to you, then you won't push the issue. At all. Each of them has the right to completely ignore you, and if they do you'll respect that and back off.”
It was the lack of threat or emphasis that scared Kell. This wasn't a man who growled or tried to instill fear. Victor saw no essential difference between letting them go about their business and killing them to keep his people safe. One of them was less work than the other, but it was a negligible job if it came to that.
Everyone on Kell's side of the room had enough practice governing their own reactions that no one so much as bristled at the implied consequences of disobeying.
“Would it be okay if I asked a few questions?” Kell asked.
Victor raised an eyebrow. “Other than that one?”
Kell nodded.
“Of course,” Victor said. “I might not answer, but you're welcome to ask.”
Kell glanced at the gorilla behind the glass, which itself was only a corner of the large parcel of land the ape had at its disposal. “Why a zoo?”
Victor smiled, which sent the hard planes of his face off at slightly odd angles. “What's not to love about them?” he asked. “They're already fenced in and walled. They're filled with hidden bunkers and have plenty of farmland, just to name a few reasons. But what you're really asking is why are some of the animals still here, right?”
“Yeah,” Kell said, dragging out the word.
Victor shrugged. “Who else was going to take care of them? Everything fell apart. Even if they'd been released, most of them would have died in the wild. I didn't want that to happen.”
He paused again, as if weighing a decision.
“I know what you were before the world went to hell,” Victor said. “You didn't become a biologist or whatever since then, I'm sure. I guess it's fair you know what I did. I was a criminal. I ran a local drug ring.”
Unsure how to react, Kell merely cocked his head slightly.
“I wasn't a kingpin or anything,” Victor continued. “We distributed a lot of pot, mostly. Sometimes pills. I tried to keep things peaceful, but in that business you always have someone trying to steal from you or take over. It got nasty from time to time.”
Victor waved a hand at their surroundings. “My town wasn't far from here, and by sheer coincidence it sat in the middle of a triangle formed by three other towns, each with their own zoos. When things got too stressful, I'd take my girlfriend and her kid to one of them. For a while I was able to forget. That's why I picked a zoo.”
Eleven
Trenton reminded Kell of something, but it took nearly two hours of walking around the place to put his finger on it.
“It's a little like the Shire,” he said when it finally came to him.
“The what?” Lee asked.
“You're right,” Emily said, chuckling. “All the hills, the openings in the ground, it's sort of like Hobbiton.”
“Ooooh,” Lee said, nodding his head. “Yeah, I can see that.”
The comparison was weirdly accurate. Beyond the loose similarities Emily stated, there were others. Food grew everywhere, for one, and the place had the sort of isolated English town vibe Tolkien had tried so hard to get across. The zoo had doubled as a botanical garden, so a wide variety of trees and other flora could be found in clusters at every turn. It gave the place a surreal quality, a small chunk of serenity in an otherwise rugged and dangerous world.
It was certainly a hell of a lot nicer than the death trap they'd stayed at the night before.
The people of Trenton served as a sharp break where the pleasant fantasy diverged from reality. They weren't rude or even impolite, but neither did they offer any sort of help or greetings. It made a lot of sense, when Kell spent a few minutes thinking about it. Living in relative isolation and relying on physical barriers to keep out threats meant anything from the outside was suspect. The bone-deep bonds forged by trusting your neighbor to have your back in a fight just didn't exist here.
A part of him felt distrustful—even a little angry—that these people had it so easy for so long, but Kell didn't hold onto the feeling. It was a stupid way to live your life, holding onto resentment because someone else was lucky enough to avoid the blood and death you had to fight through. Hadn't he isolated himself early in The Fall for that same reason?
Kell spotted a few kids playing as they moved about Trenton, and whatever dregs of anger he felt drained away. Maybe if he'd have moved faster and gotten his family to a place like this...
“Here we are,” Emily said, gesturing toward a re-purposed shipping container partially buried in the side of a hill. “This is where Esther lives.”
Esther would be the third stop on their tour, the previous two candidates refusing to cooperate after lengthy discussions. The first two stops had begun with a fluttering hope in Kell's chest along with the nervous energy of someone about to sit down for a job interview. Now he felt nothing but the bored anticipation of being rejected like a census taker or a political shill begging for donations.
Emily's knock on the door of the makeshift house resounded like a deformed bell as the metal hummed. The sound of footsteps led to a clanging rattle as the lock on the inside was disengaged. The door swung open to reveal Esther, who was smiling. Kell knew it was her from Emily's description, as the woman was unique in the way only people like Mason could be.
A wide, colorful bandanna held back a mane of thick, dark hair lightly threaded with strands of silver. It also held another piece of cloth in place, this one at an angle over what Emily had said was a missing or damaged eye. Rake marks from the zombie who had clawed her eye out ran down her cheek and jaw but missed the major vessels in the neck, which Kell thought a minor miracle.
“Hello!” Esther said, motioning for the three of them to come inside. “I've just put on some tea, if you'd like a cup.”
“Tea sounds great,” Kell said. “I'm a little surprised you have it.”
Esther chuckled. “I spent too many years in England to ever go without it,” she said. “The hill on over my home is where I grow the plants.”
Her accent was a fascinating mix of Dutch and British English that was measured but also fluid. Many people referred to the way people talked as musical, but Esther's voice truly was.
She led them through the shipping container, which held a neat array of shelves packed with tools and supplies, and into a hollow dome full of light. It was a concrete half-sphere that had the same look as many of the other animal shelters, though the rough skylight at the apex must have been added later.
Esther caught Kell staring and motioned for them to sit on one of the faded couches taking up the majority of the space. “It was part of a larger exhibit, this place,” Esther said as they settled in. “The little valley on the other side was a sort of melting pot. Several kinds of animals shared the space.” She waved a hand at the walls, an oddly sharp gesture. “This wasn't a habitat, or so I'm told. They brought different animals to this place to try them out before deciding whether to add a permanent shelter for them on the edge of the valley.”
“Like an airlock,” Lee said, nodding. Esther nodded.
“How did you end up with it?” Kell asked. “Seems like it could fit more people, so why not give it to a family?”
Esther smiled wryly. “I think you've already guessed that. When I had my...accident,” she said, gesturing to the scars running down her face, “Victor thought it best I be put away from too many other people.”
She took a sip of tea and set the cup down carefully. “That's why you're here, yes? To find out what happened to me?”
“Yeah,” Emily said, but Kell put up a hand.
“Not just that,” Kell said. “Knowing what happened will help inform me why you changed as a result. And you did change, didn't you?”
Esther's pleasant manner didn't fade, but froze solid. Emily's previous trip to Trenton had been a fact-finding mission. She identified people who, like Josh, had died just long enough to have Chimera partially take hold but not long enough to become zombies. Where Emily had been carefully subtle, Kell was being blunt.
Not from impatience or in irritation from the rejections they had already faced. Kell wanted to gauge Esther's reaction to being called out. Both to see how she felt about her condition and to determine whether she recognized it in the first place.
“How did you know?” Esther asked, fear saturating her words.
Kell leaned forward and patted her hand. “When people talk for a long time, they tend to take a deep breath before and after. You didn't. You didn't take a breath at all. The organism handles oxygenation of the dead by drawing in air through the pores.” Esther looked horrified, and Kell tried to reassure her. “We don't want to hurt you, Esther. We aren't going to tell anyone. But I think studying you can help me move closer to a cure. Are you willing to help?”
She nodded, some of the tension draining away. “What do you need?”
Kell sat back in his chair. “We'll start at the end. Tell me how you died.”
“It was
two years ago,” Esther said, her remaining eye looking somewhere far away. “We were in the middle of expanding our wall. I was helping clear some brush, and one of those things was hiding beneath it. It got hold of my ankle. I fell, and it clawed its way up my body.”
She twisted on the sofa, pulling the hem of her shirt up several inches to reveal sections of long, twisting scars on her abdomen and side. “It was so much faster than the others I'd seen. The smell of it, the noise of its teeth gnashing...it was horrible.”
Esther took a deep, shuddering breath. “I remember the pain from its claws, and then it felt like a giant grabbed me. My chest, jaw, and neck hurt. The world went dark. When I woke up later, the people around me were terrified. I know it must have been a heart attack. I should have stayed dead.”
“They gave me CPR,” Esther said. “Closed my wounds with anything they could find. Duct tape and super glue out there in the field, then stitches later once I came back. They tried to resuscitate me for a quarter hour, and ten seconds after they stopped I sat bolt upright as if nothing had happened.”
Kell nodded. “Exactly like Josh. Like the plague hit a reset button.”
“What I've never understood is how. I mean, aren't heart attacks blockages? How have I never had any ill effects? And my injuries should have been enough to bleed me out, but the people who saved my life said the wounds stopped bleeding within minutes.” Esther shook her head. “It's always been a mystery to me.”
“Well,” Kell said, falling into the old frame of thought from his days as a researcher, “it's not that complex. The organism is symbiotic. It wants the host—that's us—to live. It reacted to your heart stopping by fixing the problem. The same with your wounds. I've got loads of data collected over the years showing how much it has improved our ability to heal. Coagulation isn't a tough job for something spread through every system in your body.”
