Huggins liked “difficulties.” It spoke to the zombies without using the z-word. Very clever. On a good day, the governor still had a little magic in him. (Huggins remembered what he had seen in this man so many years ago. Why he had selected Burleson as the horse on which to bet his career. The charisma. The on-camera magnetism. The whip-smart intelligence.)
Governor Burleson made this nod to zombies more explicit by winking at the camera.
Huggins liked it. Huggins liked it a lot.
“We’re also doing our best to move resources around where they can do the most good,” the governor continued, the bullshit beginning to flow more easily. “We’ve got an award-winning emergency management team in this city. Groups come from all over the world to learn from us, in particular how we handle the 500. And now all these people are working as hard as they can. But as you see, we’ve had to close the center of the city for security reasons. We’re still without electricity, but, uh, I’ve been assured that the folks over at Indiana Power and Light are doing everything they can to get the grid up as quickly as possible. My office is working closely with them.”
This was just a boldfaced lie. The governor had not heard from IPL at all. Since the power had died, there had been nothing but total silence.
They neared the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the giant traffic circle that flowed around it. Huggins motioned for van Zanten to move the camera lower still. He wanted people to see the towering monument in the background as the governor sallied forth on his quest. They could make stills from these shots, and send them around to the newspapers, too. There would be no question about where Governor Burleson had been during the outbreak. (What was your governor doing during the first moments of the crisis? You don’t really know? That’s funny, ’cause ours was right here, in the very heart of the city!)
The governor rounded the circle and continued east down Market Street toward the City-County Building. Before he could make much progress, a uniformed police officer coming the other way ran up and asked what was happening. An anxiety in the policeman’s eyes said please, somebody, anybody, be in charge.
“We’re here to connect with the mayor . . .” Burleson told the policeman. He turned and smiled into the camera.
The policeman said okay and ran back toward the City-County Building. Burleson and his entourage continued along at a leisurely pace. The businesses and tall office buildings surrounding them were shuttered and dark. Nobody had had to tell employees not to come in today. The governor had never seen the heart of the city so reduced. None of them had. Somehow, more than just commerce had stopped. It—whatever it was—went deeper. It was as if the city’s very soul had departed, at least temporarily.
A few moments later, Burleson saw a trio emerge from the City-County Building. It was the mayor, flanked by two police. She was still wearing her heels, and her suit still looked more or less immaculate. Only the heavy circles under her eyes betrayed that she—like Burleson—had been awake all night.
Huggins looked back at van Zanten, and gave an expression intended to comport that he should not fail to document this meeting. Van Zanten gave another thumbs up and continued to shoot.
The click-click-click of the mayor’s shoes became audible. Moments later they heard her voice.
“Hank?” she called.
“Kelly!” the governor shot back jovially. “What’s going on? Tell me something I don’t know.”
The mayor cocked her head to the side like a momentarily confused canine. She stopped and surveyed the governor, his chief of staff, and the cameraman capturing it all. Then she motioned for her security detail to wait behind.
“Hank . . . what is all this?” the mayor asked as she crept closer. “Do you know what kind of help we can expect in the next twenty-four hours? What have you heard from the Feds?”
Huggins winced. The F-word. No matter. It could be edited out in post-production.
The governor reached the mayor and they awkwardly shook hands.
“Is this a media crew?” the mayor asked, motioning at the camera. “Why is there a media crew here?”
“Why, no,” Burleson said. “You remember my chief of staff, Doug Huggins? This was his idea. That we document this. Could be important to posterity. Historical. He thinks so, anyway.”
Huggins liked this. The governor as the reluctant star of their production. Good. Yes. God, the man could think on his feet.
“Hank, where is the Army?” Mayor Brown continued. “Not the National Guard . . . the army Army. And have you heard from Homeland Security? Have you let them know how bad things are here?”
“We’re waiting for that call,” Burleson answered. He took out the satellite phone and held it up—to the mayor, and then also to the camera.
“The situation is developing, yes . . . but things seem to be under control,” Burleson continued. “My concern at this point is for the rest of the state. We need to replicate the success we’ve created here in Indy.”
“The success . . . ?” the mayor wondered.
Huggins stepped in to redirect the conversation.
“Madam Mayor, we were thinking maybe some shots of you and the governor in front of the City-County Building, for starters?” Huggins said. “Then I’ve prepared some remarks for you and the governor to read. I think Monument Circle would be a fine backdrop.”
“What?” the mayor asked, still obviously confused as to the nature of their project.
“We need to let people know what we’re doing, Kelly,” Burleson said.
“Hank, what are we doing?” the mayor asked emphatically. “What are you doing? I’ve been working all night trying to communicate with anyone I can. Indiana Power and Light. Emergency services. The city shelters. We’re sending runners, out there, outside of this ‘Green Zone.’ And they’re not all coming back. Hank, do you know what’s happening? Have you seen the rest of the city—how it is now? Because my people have, Hank. And it’s falling apart.”
Huggins frowned. This entire section would need to be left on the cutting room floor.
“Madam Mayor,” Huggins entreated, this time adjusting his expectations. “We were hoping at least to get some shots of you and the governor conferring. We wouldn’t even need to use the audio. Just something we could put on the websites to let people know you are working on the situation. Could you stand to face the camera a little more?”
The mayor looked at the governor in disgust.
“Really, Hank?” she asked. “Really?”
The governor went silent.
“Send somebody over when you have some real news,” the mayor said.
She turned around and headed back toward the City-County Building.
Burleson was at a loss. He looked over to Huggins. Huggins frumped one side of his face as if to say, “Well, what can you do?” Both men stood quietly, trying to figure out what their next step should be.
Then van Zanten—still behind his camera—called, “Uh, guys . . .”
The governor turned and saw the tall Dutchman pointing back toward the mayor. Burleson did a one-eighty. At first, he discerned nothing out of the ordinary. The mayor, still looking very annoyed, was headed back toward her security detail. (She was walking a bit slowly, Burleson noted, no doubt a consequence of having not slept.)
“The green dumpster on the right,” van Zanten called.
The governor looked. There was indeed a cluster of green trash bins at the side of an alley near the mayor. Lurking between the bins was a humanoid figure. The governor watched as it slowly loped out into the morning sunlight.
It was a woman—maybe early thirties—in a black dress and high-heeled shoes. She had glistening, almost seductive eyes, and these were framed by bright purple eyelash extensions. She had perfect teeth and round cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. She was smiling right now. The governor didn’t like the way she was smiling. He didn’t like it at all. (Something was not all together there. It was the smile of someone who did not fully appreciate tha
t a zombie outbreak was underway. It was the smile of someone under the sway of a religious delusion or a powerful mania. The governor had seen it on the mentally ill, and, occasionally, on those in the pew or pulpit. Even under the best conditions, the governor was rarely able to restrain himself from smacking a person bearing this expression. And these were not the best conditions.)
With no explanation to his staff, the governor took off at a jog toward the smiling woman. How nice it would be to cuff someone like that across the face. How cathartic after such a night as he had had! Some people were in need of a good smacking. The governor knew this if he knew anything. Who was this woman and what did she think she was doing? Sneaking around downtown when no upstanding person should be out and about. . . . Wearing decadent purple eyelash extensions, like she was at a goddamn New York City disco in the middle of the night, and not on the honest, hardworking streets of Indianapolis at eight in the morning!
The mayor heard the governor’s jog and turned to see what was the matter.
“You need something else, Hank?” she called.
The governor gave her an expression that said: “Don’t even worry about it.” And pointed to the cluster of green dumpsters.
The confused mayor saw the woman in black, and looked back and forth between her and the governor.
Then, suddenly, the expression of decadent nightclub-patron fell away, and the strange woman opened her mouth to release an inhuman howl. She arched her back like a beast, raised her long fingernails like claws, and fell upon the mayor.
Luckily, the governor was already in mid-slap.
Burleson brought the ridge of his hand down hard across the woman’s face. Her head snapped sharply to the side, giving the governor, for the first time, a look at the back of her head. Which was not there. Despite her immaculate clothing and makeup, the back of the woman’s skull was half-destroyed. The flesh was bashed in, and the bone had been crushed. Likely, she had been the victim of a fall, perhaps from a trendy rooftop lounge onto the distant concrete below.
Instantly, the governor understood: One of those things. No longer a “who” or a “whom” . . . but an “it.” A zombie.
The thing staggered only for a moment under the governor’s blow. Then it released a second howl and lunged again at the mayor, who screamed and fell to the concrete. The thing jumped on top of her, teeth gnashing and nails scraping. Security teams from both sides began sprinting toward the mayor, but it was clear that vital seconds would pass before she could be reached. One officer raised his gun, but found no shot to take.
Burleson moved without thinking. He was a broad-shouldered man, and had been fairly athletic in his day. Wrestling had been his sport, and you never forgot the moves. They came to him now without being consciously called.
The governor dove forward and knocked the gnashing thing off of the mayor, who was still screaming and flailing. The governor leapt and fell on the zombie from behind, placing it in a full Nelson hold. (This hold was banned in competition—both high school and intercollegiate—but the governor didn’t see any referees standing nearby. What he did see was a monster that wanted to eat the highest municipal officer in the city.)
The governor felt his fingers interlace behind the zombie’s neck. The undead woman bucked powerfully in the governor’s grip. It was strong—not supernaturally so, but it was giving all it had. Disconcertingly, the governor found himself vulnerable to the thing’s long fingernails, which began to dig at his sport coat, scratching for his ribs underneath.
The governor rose to his feet, pulling the thing up and away from the mayor. Still wincing at the attacks to his midsection, he forcefully walked the zombie over to the wall of the nearest building. (He looked like a rookie policeman struggling to detain his first unruly suspect.) A comic book store occupied the street-level storefront nearby. With a cardboard Superman and Batman looking on from the window, the governor forced the zombie forward against the stone wall of the building, and proceeded to bash out what was left of its brains.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Again and again, the governor brought the thing’s head down hard against the stone wall. His jacket was soon flecked with blood spatter. After five or six blows, the thing stopped digging for his ribs. After a few more, it collapsed completely in his arms.
The governor gave it one more smash for good measure, and then dropped the motionless corpse to the sidewalk below. It hit the ground and rolled over once, revealing a forehead quite caved in, and a face now unrecognizable.
A fake purple eyelash had attached itself to the front of the governor’s jacket. He ticked it away with his middle finger as though it were an insect. It spun through the air and drifted quietly to the ground.
Burleson helped the mayor back to her feet. She looked quite stunned. It had all happened so quickly! Uniformed police arrived from both sides of the street. Some secured the elected officials, while others poured several rounds of ammo into the unmoving zombie.
The governor brushed away his security as if to say, “No, I’m all right.” He patted his ribs where the zombie had clawed at him. There would be some bruises in a few hours, he decided, but nothing had broken the skin. Even the jacket itself was not beyond repair. Not too bad, all things considered.
Van Zanten stood at a distance and continued to film. Huggins stood with him. Both men were smiling from ear to ear. Huggins actually looked as though he were fighting the urge to start jumping up and down and cheering. Burleson met the eyes of his chief of staff, and began to understand.
Yes, he thought. This would do.
It might not be Birch Bayh rescuing Ted Kennedy from a burning airplane, but as acts of heroism by Hoosier elected officials went, it was pretty darn good. Saving the mayor of Indianapolis from being eaten by a zombie? Yeah. That would do nicely.
A few feet away, the governor heard his chief of staff address the cameraman.
“You can stop filming, van Zanten,” he said. “I think we’ve got what we came for.”
“Yeah,” van Zanten said, lowering the camera. “I think so, too.”
With the camera off, Burleson felt himself relax. He walked over to the mayor, who was still being tended to by police.
“You okay, Kelly?” he asked.
She appeared ruffled and scratched, but otherwise fine.
“I think so,” she said as a female police officer brushed away dust and blood from her suit. “Thanks for that, Hank.”
“Yalp,” the governor responded.
Their summit apparently over, he turned and began a leisurely stroll back toward the marble capitol building.
This was something. In the space of an hour, he had gone from a do-nothing (waiting for a call from the Federal government like a teenager waiting for a date to the prom) to a take-charge hero who was physically protecting the women of his state—well, one woman, technically . . . but an important one!—on the mean streets of Naptown. That was going to be the impression, anyway. And that was what counted. Governor Burleson knew that in minutes, Huggins and van Zanten would have that footage edited and uploaded to every news website that still existed.
All in all, a solid morning’s work.
The governor felt he more than deserved a reward. If only it were possible. (Though, alas, in these circumstances, it was not.) Still, in his mind, the governor momentarily allowed himself to drift down to his “happy place.” The place he went to reward himself for having done something really important . . .
That quaint, secluded cabin in the woods, an hour or so south of the city.
11
Nolan parked his Jeep in front of the cabin and killed the engine. Several years had elapsed since his last visit—and that had been in the dead of night—yet he felt reasonably certain that this was indeed the correct location. Set back in the woods southwest of Bedford, near the White River, down a long gravel road—the place was a “cabin” in only the loosest sense of the word. Many families did not have houses this nice, or spacious. But the L
incoln-log theme to the construction—and the stained, unpainted pine exterior—seemed to make clear that the notion of “cabin” was being, if not fastidiously upheld, at least invoked.
Nolan got out of the Jeep. It was now practically mid-morning. It had taken him just under two hours to navigate the country roads—paved, but usually without painted center lines—leading from the carnival to the governor’s not-so-secret cabin in the woods. The journey had been more difficult than Nolan had expected. This was not because his atlas had been inadequate, or because there were not road signs at regular intervals. Rather, Nolan had had difficulty because the landscape around him was so utterly changed.
It seemed every hundred yards or so there was a new sign of wrongness. A new sign that the hours of darkness just preceding had not passed peacefully across the countryside. Wrecked cars and trucks were a regular feature along all the roads. Most of them appeared to have been headed south—away from Indy. (But going where, exactly, Nolan had wondered? If you kept driving, you just hit other cities. Louisville. Nashville. St. Louis. Wherever you fled in this country, you were fleeing “to” just as surely as you were fleeing “from.” Maybe the gamble everyone was willing to take was that there weren’t zombies in other places, or that it would be “not so bad” in another environment.)
Some of the wrecked cars had occupants inside that were obviously dead. Nolan had stopped counting bodies when he got to twenty.
It was also clear that many fires had been set overnight. Few were blazing now, but many still emitted the thick smoke of a slow-smoldering flame. The smell was horrible. Some things you wanted to smell burning in early fall in southern Indiana. Leaves. Charcoal. Bonfires. These, though, were not those things. This was plasterboard and metal and rubber and gasoline. This was a house fire combined with a chemical plant fire combined with whatever else was handy. These were not the things that burned during an overnight snuggle in a sleeping bag after a few brewski’s. These were things that burned only in times of crisis and disaster.
The roads Nolan took usually abutted cornfields or undeveloped land, but occasionally there were houses set back a few hundred feet—often with large, immaculately cared-for lawns. Occasionally, Nolan would round a bend or crest a hill and come upon a small house that had been completely looted. Possessions would be dragged halfway into the yard and then just abandoned. Bed frames and couches sticking out of windows or jamming doorways. Once, Nolan saw a yard that looked as though a whirlwind had simply blown all of the clutter outside of the house; the carefully trimmed lawn was completely covered with paper plates, blankets, clothing, and appliances.
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