The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

Chapter Thirty Six

Larissa pulled her ATV up to the entrance of what had once been an abandoned Culver’s restaurant just north of Winnebago, Illinois. When they’d chosen the building the interior had been coated in thick layers of dust, and the walk-in coolers had still contained the desiccated remains of long-decayed food. It wasn’t in quite the same sad shape now, but no one had made the effort to fix it up properly. They’d chosen it because it was one of the few buildings on the outskirts of town that looked like a stiff wind wouldn’t blow it over, but that didn’t mean they were going to stay here long. Neuman Security was still in its infancy, and they weren’t sure yet where they were going to call home.

Rae Neuman came to the door as Larissa got off the ATV and took her rifle from over her shoulders. Rae had given all of her new “employees” explicit orders to keep their weapons ready at all times. They didn’t know who, or maybe what, they would be facing, but Rae knew that a threat could pop up at any time. Just because she had confidence that they’d be getting some action soon, however, didn’t mean the others believed her.

“Yet another round of the town and we’ve still got jack shit,” Larissa said. “This is getting to be a little ridiculous, Rae.”

“Oh don’t give me that,” Rae said. “You would be finding just as little action if we had stayed in Fond du Lac, and you know it.”

“Yeah, but if I had stayed in Fond du Lac then at least I would know Merton was going to be paying me sometime soon. You still haven’t proven to me that you will.”

“Everyone will have their Goddamned pay, but you’re still going to have to wait. If you don’t fricking like it, then you can walk back up to Fond du Lac.”

Larissa grumbled but went inside. Rae didn’t think she had to worry about the girl leaving, at least not for a while. The girl was only barely an adult, and she hadn’t had a chance to get out and do anything with her life yet. Even if she found this boring, it was still better than her previous job desk-sitting in the Merton building.

Larissa was one of only a handful of the first wave of people Rae had recruited from Merton when she walked out on the job a couple of weeks earlier. Few people had believed her stories of a thinking, talking, human-looking zombie at first. Some, such as Larissa, had heard enough of the idle talk from onlookers on the day of Edward’s standoff that they at least gave Rae a chance to make her case. Rae had walked out of Merton that very day, not wanting any part of the cover-up. Johnny had tried to talk some sense into her, so she’d walked out on him as well. That would have been the end of it if she hadn’t dug deeper, looking for evidence to back up her claims. A few questions to the right people had turned up the term Z7, as well as a few key names in the CRS that she could use to at least make her story believable to a few more people. The real coup, however, had been finding the picture of Edward someone had taken just as the CRS was taking him out of the back of Ringo’s truck. It had been enough get the attention of a few somewhat disreputable media outlets. She had made her appearance on national television almost a week ago, and that was when things had gotten interesting. Merton Security didn’t (she hoped) have any idea where she was right now, although she couldn’t expect that to continue for long.

“Please tell me Cory finally got those old grills working,” Larissa said.

“Yeah, he did,” Rae said, “But that doesn’t mean he can cook worth a shit. And the dumbass didn’t bother to clean them off before he turned them on for the first time. So beware, the entire kitchen area smells like burning dust.”

“Hell, I don’t care,” Larissa said. “I’ve been patrolling the town all morning. I’m starved.”

“All morning? You’ve only been out for an hour.”

“And I didn’t wake up until almost eleven, so it was all of my morning.”

She let Larissa go back into the kitchen while Rae proceeded to the dining room and the makeshift command center Cory had set up. He’d pushed together any old tables that could still stand by themselves and covered them with the yellowing city maps the old man had found for them. Broken salt and pepper shakers marked the places where they had sentries around the town, while chopped up pieces of straw represented the zombies that had been found so far and pushed out of the town limits. Larissa, Jojo, and Luke had wanted to kill the zombies they’d found, but Rae made it perfectly clear that if any of them killed a zed then she would put a hole in that person’s head to match. Her parents were probably spinning in their graves over such an order, but Edward had put a significant amount of doubt in her mind when it came to the reanimated. So she kept the zeds out of town, far away from the old man, but did nothing else to them.

“Did I just see Larissa come in?” Cory asked.

“She went in back to see if she could burn lunch less than you could.”

“Damn it, she knows that the first thing she’s supposed to do when she comes in between patrols is report to me.”

“You and I both know her reports are less than reliable anyways. What did Jojo and Luke have to say when they came in?”

Cory indicated the maps. “Look for yourself. I sent them both off to see if they could confirm this, but do you see anything weird here?”

Rae sat down on the least-rickety looking chair she could find and stared at the maps. Shakers indicated Luke and Jojo’s approximate locations, both on the west side of town. A normal patrol would have taken them all around the town with Larissa and occasionally Rae acting as extra sets of eyes looking west, but Rae could see right away that there was a major discrepancy that hadn’t been on the maps yesterday.

They’d been tracking at least eighteen zombies in the area immediately surrounding Winnebago. Jojo had found some paint that hadn’t gone completely bad in the ruins of an old hardware store, and they’d been using the brightest they could find to tag the zombies with marks on their chests and backs so they could be seen from a distance. If a zombie showed up without a tag, they knew it had to have just recently wandered in. They’d had a few of those new additions in their first two days here, but not in the days after that. The straw pieces on the map were colored with the same paint as their respective zombies, giving them an idea where each one was. Everyone on patrol kept track of which ones they saw where, and reported it in to Cory.

The strange thing now, however, was most of the straw pieces had been removed from the map.

“Well, it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” Rae asked. “So the question is where did they go?”

“I don’t think you’re actually seeing what I’m talking about,” Cory said. “Take a look at the pattern.”

Rae pulled out her canister of chewing tobacco, put a pinch in her mouth, and chewed as she tried to see what Cory saw. Out of the eighteen zombies that called the area around Winnebago their home, only six were left. The answer came to her quickly. She’d been preoccupied with the disappeared zombies, not with the position of the ones that remained. All six were to the east and slightly south of the town.

“Did someone kill them?” Rae asked.

“They’re already dead. I keep trying to tell you that, but it’s like you aren’t paying attention.”

“I’m paying plenty of attention. I just don’t have the same limited idea of what death means anymore. Answer the question.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Cory said. “If they were dead, we would have found bodies.”

“So twelve zeds just vanish, no bodies, and it doesn’t affect the ones in a specific area. Whatever’s going on, why doesn’t it seem to be happening on the east side of town?”

“I wondered that, too, but then both Luke and Jojo told me that had to use the shock prods more than usual today. Those six remaining zeds? They were trying to get into town.”

“You think all the others are hiding somewhere in town?”

“No, I don’t. Look.” He threw the rest of straws on the map, placing them randomly around the town. “These six were trying to get into town. They were all going the same direction. Do you see now?” He pushed the six toward town but stopped them at the first groups of wrecked buildings. Then he pushed all the others in the same direction. There was no town or security detail to stop them, so they all kept going.

Rae pulled out the old mayonnaise jar she’d been keeping under the table as a spittoon and spit a wad of dark saliva into it, then stared at the map. They were all heading west.

“And when did this start?” she asked.

“All the zeds were accounted for as of the midnight patrol.”

She nodded. “Something’s going on west of here. Any ideas?”

“Not a clue. If we really want to know, we’ll have to send someone out there to scout it.”

“The old man hasn’t said anything?” Rae asked.

“He hasn’t left the library. Jojo went in to check on him, make sure nothing had happened, and the old man just shooed her out again. Although, yeah, now that I think about it Jojo said he looked kind of excited when she said most of the zeds were gone. You think he has something to do with it?”

“You know him just about as well I do. What do you think?”

“I think that if that crazy old fucker isn’t behind the disappearances, he at least knows what’s caused them.”

“Then I say we go ask him,” Rae said.

She was about to go into the kitchen to tell Larissa to keep an eye on the place while they were gone, but Luke came in through the door before she could do anything.

“Holy shit guys. You need to come see this.”

“What is it?” Rae asked.

“Me and Jojo found the zeds. Rae, look, I know you’re got this whole pacifist thing going with them, but I think maybe you should rethink that for today.”

“Come on, quit teasing us, honey,” Cory said. “Are you going to tell us or not?”

“No, Cory, this is something you’ve got to see to believe. If Larissa’s here she should probably come, too. And everyone should bring their guns.”

Larissa and Luke took their ATVs while Rae and Cory took his car. They didn’t have to go far. There was the remains of a major highway just north of the Culvers, and they all found Jojo huddled behind her own ATV with a pair of binoculars in hand and her rifle at the ready nearby. Rae went to her side with Spanky in her hands, and the others soon joined them.

“You moved,” Luke said. “Weren’t you further down?”

“I had to get back closer to base,” Jojo said. Her deep voice quavered a little. That was odd and a little disturbing. Jojo had always been the stupidly brave sort. “They’re moving faster than they should.”

“Can you still see them?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, but you won’t need to binoculars for that very soon.”

“Give them to me,” Rae said. Jojo handed her the binoculars without argument, and Rae pointed them where she had been looking. It was immediately apparent what had rattled the two of them. Down the road she could see all the painted zeds that had disappeared, and far more besides. She couldn’t be sure of the exact number, but she thought fifty would be a conservative estimate. It was a true horde, the kind her parents had told her about in hushed tones, the sort of thing a human had to get away from as fast as possible if they wanted to survive. But although her first instinct was to run, her heart started to calm the more she stared. Jojo was right. They were coming fast, and the longer she looked the easier it was to tell why.

“Stand down, everyone,” Rae said. “Put all your rifles away.”

“Okay, that is now officially crazy,” Luke said.

“No, it’s not,” Rae said. “This is exactly what we’ve been waiting for.”

She focused the binoculars on one particular zombie, the one at the very front. It wasn’t usual for zeds to follow one leader like that, but apparently they had made an exception here.

Edward Schuett was finally here, and he had brought with him his own zombie army.

Chapter Thirty Seven

At first, Edward made the corpse of Billy Horton follow him as a punishment. He used Horton’s truck to get a reasonable distance from Laramie, but it was an older model with gas mileage more like what Edward remembered from his own time and it ran out in what he guessed was somewhere in Nebraska. He forced Horton to spend all that time in the truck bed. For a while he was even petty enough to force Horton to lean over the side where all the various insects would splatter in his face, but that got old. In fact, the whole idea of vengeance against this man lost its appeal very quickly. The man who had killed Liddie was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Even if Edward did learn the secret to turning a regular zombie into a Z7, Horton wouldn’t get that treatment. Let the bastard wander around and eventually get shot in the head.

Once Edward had to go back to walking, however, he found having Horton around made some things easier. After some practice he figured out how to use the pheromone to make the zombie flush out small animals from their hiding places, where Edward could then pick them off with Horton’s rifle to feed himself. He used the next zombie he found for pretty much the same use at first, but that didn’t feel right. Edward didn’t give a rat’s ass about Horton, but the new one could maybe be saved by whatever process had turned Edward. It gave Edward some satisfaction that maybe he could help at least one person where he had so terribly failed Liddie. So Horton continued being Edward’s lapdog while the new one was closer to Edward’s equal. He made the next one follow him as well, and the next.

Pretty soon he wasn’t just picking up stray zombies in his path. He sought them out, sniffing for any hint on the wind that a zombie was nearby. And he sent out his own pheromones that grew stronger with every zombie added to his horde. The more he found, the further his reach.

The problem, however, was keeping them fed. He couldn’t stop them from eating entirely, since if they started starving they became slower and less responsive. He could push them to greater speeds with the pheromones, but that only went so far, and the various animals they found were generally too fast for the zombies to get them on their own. The horde grew too quickly for Edward to be able to feed them, especially since he only had a limited amount of ammunition and he had to use that for his own hunting if he ever wanted to reach Winnebago. Eventually he let a few go that were too slow to keep up.

Several times the thought occurred to him that he could feed them all if he just descended on a town somewhere. Even with the security all these places had in mid-country, they wouldn’t be expecting a horde that could coordinate their movements on this scale.

He could save all these zombies easily if he only killed living people. The irony was not lost on him, and he couldn’t bring himself to take that step. Not yet, at least.

Nearly a week after he and Liddie escaped from the CRS, Edward saw the first sign announcing that Winnebago was close. At the start of the journey he thought he would receive this moment with excitement and anticipation, but now there was no real joy at knowing the end was near. He knew that this mysterious old man had all the answers, but Edward didn’t have the slightest clue what he would do with the answers once he found them.

He could smell the group standing in the road at the edge of the town long before he saw them. The other zombies smelled them, too, and Edward had to work to keep them from going into a hungry frenzy. He had to admit that the smell of living meat ahead of them was enticing, then remembered that it wasn’t too long ago that thinking of a human as meat had repulsed him. He snorted at the memory, but without any humor.

Within a couple minutes he could see them. They were all armed, and Edward almost paused to consider what to do next. They hadn’t done anything to him yet that would justify attacking them, but at the same time they stood between him and the last thing in his life that had any meaning. He could send the horde to plow right through them, both taking care of their little roadblock and revitalizing the zombies at the same time. Or the group could be smart and try to run, but Edward didn’t have faith anymore that people could be that intelligent. All those people, the living ones, the humans, they all thought they were so much better. They had never given much thought to what would happen if they pissed off the wrong zombie, because pissing off a zombie had never been possible before. If people didn’t wise up very soon, there was an unfortunate possibility that Edward would have to teach them.

That whole line of thought became moot, however, when he saw one of the people motion for all the others to put their weapons down. Edward continued, hoping this wasn’t some kind of trap, until he got close enough to see the leader. Or, rather, until he was close enough to see her bright pink and silver rifle.

For the first time in almost a thousand miles of travel, Edward smiled.

He didn’t even need to concentrate too hard anymore to manipulate the pheromones into a stop order. The horde instantly ceased moving. He had enough experience now to know they would stand completely still for a couple minutes, and if he did nothing to reinforce the pheromones the zombies would then get fidgety. In about ten minutes they would begin to mill around, in fifteen they would probably try to attack the human in front of them. He had about that long to talk.

Leaving the horde behind at what he hoped was a non-threatening distance, Edward continued on down the road. Rae stepped away from her group but didn’t come the rest of the way to meet him. Edward stopped a couple feet away from her, and she gave him a cautious smile.

“Hey there, stranger,” she said.

“Rae, I never in a million years would have expected to see you here.”

“And I would have never expected to be here. But it’s been a strange couple weeks.”

“Yeah, I know how that one goes,” he said.

“I would say you probably know it a whole hell of a lot better than I do,” she said, pointing first at the horde behind him and then at the large bloodstained hole in the front of his coveralls. Edward had practically forgotten it was there. The wound had healed within a day, although he could still feel the bullet jabbing tender parts inside him if he breathed too hard. “I bet you that’s going to be quite the story.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but it might just be one I keep to myself.”

Rae nodded. “We were told you were coming and you wouldn’t be alone, but I expected at least one more person with a heartbeat. Where’s Claudia Gates?”

Edward sucked in a breath. “How the fuck did you know about her?”

“There’s a certain old man around here. I think you might have talked to him at least once. He claims to have a lot of secret contacts in high up places. Those contacts apparently told him that the CRS was planning on putting you down, and they got him in contact with her. He told me that the younger Gates was with you when he talked to you and that she would be by your side. So where is she?”

Edward said the words slowly. “Wyoming, in a grave a lot shallower than she deserves.”

Rae fidgeted. “Oh.”

“The man who killed her is back there,” Edward said, cocking his thumb back over his shoulder. “Maybe if I ever see Liddie’s mother again I’ll turn him over to her. She can dissect him, if she wants.”

Rae looked less comfortable around him by the second. “You turned him into a zed?”

“He deserved worse.”

He noticed she held Spanky a little tighter in her hands, but he didn’t care if she suddenly got the urge to shoot him. He could understand her discomfort.

“Edward, what happened to you?” she asked. “This isn’t the person I met a couple weeks ago who just wanted to find his daughter.”

He snorted. “I’m sorry. I really am. But most people wouldn’t describe me as a person anymore.”

“Well I still do,” she said.

“Good,” Edward said. “That makes one of us.”

Cory, Luke, and Jojo were so engrossed in the bizarre powwow happening down the road from them that none of them noticed as Larissa backed away from the group and ducked out of sight behind a telephone pole off the highway. It was a terrible hiding place, but it wasn’t like she needed them not to see her. She just needed them to not see the phone she pulled out of her pocket. None of the others in the group had been able to get a signal out here, but Larissa’s phone was different. It ran on the same principles as the one that crazy old man kept, but Larissa’s had been given to her for completely different reasons.

She pushed a button. She didn’t need to do anything else, since the phone could only call one number.

“He’s here,” Larissa whispered into it. “And it’s a situation, uh, crap I can’t remember. Um, C? Yeah, situation C. No, I’m positive. Yes, that one. Okay. Don’t worry, I’ll do exactly like you told me. I’ll see you soon, Dr. Chella.”

Chapter Thirty Eight

Rae nervously fingered Spanky’s trigger. Edward was quite a sight, standing before her in ruined and blood-darkened clothing with his own personal army behind him. Everything she had done over the last several weeks had been due to the idea that an innocent man had been caught in circumstances beyond his control. He had plenty of control now, but he no longer seemed so innocent.

Ghostly memories of her parents screamed in her head, telling her to shoot him. He looked more human now than ever, but on the inside he might have gone in the opposite direction. This was not something her parents would have wanted to live.

In her own mind, however, Edward still was not a something. He was a someone. Whatever he had gone through and seen since he had left Wisconsin, she refused to believe it could possibly be enough to completely get rid of that scared yet determined man she’d first met.

She lowered Spanky, and his muscles visibly relaxed. There had been some sort of unspoken standoff here, but she wasn’t sure which of them had won.

“I suppose we should do this, then” Rae said. “The old man has been waiting for you. From what my lieutenant said, he’s probably even expecting you right now.”

Edward raised an eyebrow. “Your lieutenant? Since when do you have a lieutenant at Merton?”

“I don’t have one at Merton, I have one here. I told you, it’s been an interesting few weeks.”

“Why don’t you fill me in on our way to…I’m guessing this man is waiting for me at 210 North Elida Street?”

“That’s the place,” Rae said. “But, um, should you do something with…you know, them first?” She pointed back at the horde behind them.

“Do your people have ways of keeping them away without hurting them?” Edward asked.

“Low-level shock prods with every one of our vehicles, a few nets for larger groups. Don’t worry, I won’t let any of my people hurt your, um, I guess those would be your people.”

“I’ll do my best to return the favor, but mine don’t take orders too well.” His body tensed for a second, making Rae think something was wrong, until all the zombies dispersed in different directions. Not a one of them came toward Rae’s group.

“Okay, how the flying fuck did you just do that?” Rae asked.

“I smelled nice at them.”

Rae couldn’t tell if he was trying to be sarcastic or if that was really what he had done, but she didn’t think she really wanted to know.

She motioned for him to follow her, and they went back to the rest of her group. “Edward, go ahead and meet Neuman Security.”

Edward nodded at them. “Hello. Is this your whole group?”

“Unless you count the old man, then yeah. But he’s not exactly part of the team. He’s really more like our employer.”

Luke snorted. “Except he’s not paying us anything.”

Rae rolled her eyes. “He’s paid us in equipment, and damned good equipment considering what little else there is to find out here. Edward, that’s Jojo, Luke, Cory and…” She looked around. “Now where the hell did Larissa go this time?”

Larissa ran up them from off on the side of the road. “Sorry, had to go find a nice private bush.”

“And Larissa,” Rae finished. “Everyone, this is him. This is Edward Schuett.”

They all nodded or gave half-hearted waves, but Rae could see a little bit of fear in all their eyes. She would have reassured them, but she still wasn’t quite sure there was nothing to fear.

“Okay everyone, back to your regular patrols,” Rae said. “Keep an eye out for all our, uh, new arrivals. You know the drill with them. Cory, you continue coordinating everything and let me know by the walkies if there’s anything important. I’m going with Edward into town to see the old man.”

“Good luck,” Cory said. “You know, sometimes I’d rather hang out with the zeds than with that guy. He’s just plain not all there anymore, if you ask me.”

“Not to mention the zeds’ moans are easier to understand than anything that comes out of his mouth,” Luke said. They all got on their ATVs with Cory and Luke sharing one. Rae motioned for Edward to come with her to the car.

“Neuman Security, huh?” Edward asked.

“Yeah. After you were taken away, I started poking my nose in where it didn’t belong about the whole thing. I even thought I could find something somewhere about your daughter…”

“You wouldn’t,” Edward said. His voice was low with dark undertones, and Rae didn’t ask him to elaborate.

“Uh, when I did find enough to go to the press I was very sneaky about it, but as soon as my interview aired Merton tried to come down on me hard. Apparently the CRS had told them to make sure everything stayed quiet, and they wanted a little revenge for me making them look like fools.”

They got in the car, and Rae turned it around to head back into Winnebago. In many places the streets were broken up enough to be completely useless, but Rae had already explored the town enough to know exactly the quickest way to the old man’s place.

“Why did you do the interview, anyway?” Edward asked.

“Because I saw something with you I’d never seen before. A zombie who was actually more human than most humans. I hated the idea that you would be out there and no one would know or care what was happening to you.”

“And how have people actually reacted to it?” Edward asked. “It isn’t like I’ve been able to keep up on popular opinion much in the last week.”

Rae shrugged. “Most people think it’s all a scam. I mean, it wasn’t like the show I was on is exactly considered reliable, but there are enough people that take it seriously. Some think you should be destroyed if you’re ever found. Some think you should have all the same rights as any other human.”

“You say ‘other human’ as though I am one,” Edward said.

“You are, though,” she responded. Edward responded only by staring silently out the window as the car carefully crept over the potholed streets.

“Anyway,” Rae continued, “I’d already lost my job and tossed out my boyfriend by that point, so they sent some people to beat the shit of me.”

“Bastards,” Edward said.

“Oh, don’t worry. They didn’t get a chance to lay a hand on me. The sons of bitches sent Johnny, my ex, with a couple of other thugs, but he froze at just the right moment. He just couldn’t do it. I, on the other hand, had no problem with kicking his ass. Especially since the first thing they tried to do was take Spanky away from me. Nobody ever fucking touches my gun.

“By then I’d been thinking about trying to do some sort of private security gig myself, and I’d already convinced Larissa and Cory to join up with me. Cory got his boyfriend Luke to come along, and Luke convinced Jojo. But we wouldn’t have actually been able to start up if it hadn’t been for the old man.”

“Tell me about him,” Edward said. “So far the only thing I know about him is he’s old.”

“Then you know almost as much as the rest of us,” Rae said. “I don’t even know his name. The first time I saw him was right after the CRS took you. He asked what was going on and I told him, even though that CRS bitch had just told me not to. I didn’t think anything more of that until I started trying to find a picture to prove that you’d been in Fond du Lac. He came to me, said he’d heard I was looking into you. I asked him how, and he said Merton was keeping tabs on me about it, and he was keeping tabs on Merton. He’s been keeping tabs on a lot of people, apparently. Whoever the hell this guy is, he seems to have friends in an insane number of high places.”

“And why does he want to see me?” Edward asked.

“My first guess would be because everyone wants to see you, but he claims he knows things even the CRS doesn’t. He hasn’t been able to prove that to me yet, but he knew to come up to Fond du Lac to find you all the way from here, and he’s got access to equipment that no ordinary hermit can just find on the street. You’ll see what I mean when we get there.”

“So Winnebago is his home?”

“I guess. Not much of a home. This is one of those towns that didn’t have enough strategic value for anyone to try defending during the first days of the Uprising, and it was too close to the first reported cases. So it got left on its own. It’s not exactly the kind of place where you would expect to find a guy like this.”

The car finally turned onto Elida Street, which was one of the few streets around here still marked by a rusting and bent street sign. Most of the buildings around here were too broken up to be lived in, some of them even collapsing in on themselves, but one still looked like it was maintained with some regularity. The sign out front indicated that at one time this had been the Winnebago Public Library.

“This is it,” Rae said. “Final stop.”

She didn’t even bother to pull the car over. Some of the potholes along the curb were deep enough that she might not be able to get the car out of them again, and it wasn’t like anyone else would be coming along to use the street anyway. Edward got out slowly, staring at the building as though it were something to truly behold.

“Edward, are you okay?” Rae asked.

“Yes, I suppose. It’s just…never mind. I want to finally do this.”

Rae led him up to the front door. The glass doors had been smashed long ago and covered up in plywood that was at least slightly less rotten than on other buildings. She opened the door and motioned for Edward to go in ahead of her. She followed and waited for him to take in the sight.

It was still possible to tell that the building had once been a library, but that was mostly because of the books stacked as high as her shoulders in teetering towers of yellowing pages. While some shelves still remained intact, the books had all been removed from them and set to one side so the old man could use the shelves to store the incredible number of folders he’d accumulated over the years. A couple days ago when the old man hadn’t been looking she’d pulled out one of the folders to look at the contents, but it was full of handwritten notes in a sloppy hand she couldn’t read and equations and formulas she didn’t understand. The other shelves had been dismantled and put back together as work tables, and all across the tables there were microscopes, test tubes, small refrigerators, Bunsen burners, needles, and various tools that Rae couldn’t name. And huddled among them all on a stool, fidgeting excitedly as he watched Edward come in, was the old man.

“Are you him?” the old man asked.

“I guess, unless you were expecting some other Z7,” Edward said.

The old man jumped off his stool. That was pretty impressive, considering he had to be well over eighty years old by now. “Really? There’s more?”

“Um, no. I was being sarcastic,” Edward said. “How exactly would you not know I’m the only Z7? You’re the one that made me.”

The old man looked puzzled. “I did?”

“You said you did,” Edward said. “When you called. You said you were the man who created me.”

“Oh, yes, well when you put it like that then I guess I did have something to do with creating a Z7, but that’s not what I really meant.”

“Then could you please finally explain it to me?”

“Yes, yes, I’m so sorry. This should call for a proper introduction. Edward Schuett, my name is Dr. Brendan Bloss and I am the man who created the Animator Virus.”

Chapter Thirty Nine

For several seconds the old library was exactly the way it had always been intended—completely quiet. Edward stood there with Rae beside him, but he had no clue what to say and Rae’s mouth hung open in shock. Dr. Bloss watched them both with what might have been amusement on his face, but it was hard to tell through his bushy beard. Finally one of them made a sound, but Edward didn’t realize what it was at first. A clicking noise came from Rae. When Edward looked over at her he realized she had just turned off the safety on Spanky.

“That’s a load of horseshit,” Rae said.

“It’s not,” Dr. Bloss said. “Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m senile enough to make random things up for no apparent reason.”

“There’s no way that could be true,” she said. “One man could never have done that.”

“One man didn’t,” Dr. Bloss said. “I was part of a team.”

“That was fifty years ago. If someone was actually responsible for it, they would be dead by now.”

“Really? ‘If someone was responsible for it?’ Did you honestly think no one was responsible? A single virus wiped out three-quarters of the human race in a completely unnatural way. Something like that doesn’t just happen at random in nature. Well, it does sometimes, actually. Maybe I’m not making my point right.”

“You did all this,” Edward said. He was surprised at just how calm and even his voice sounded. “You nearly destroyed all of humanity.”

“You make it sound like I would have done something like that on purpose. I didn’t.”

“Yet you admit to it,” Rae said. Edward noticed that her grip on Spanky had grown tighter. “Why would you tell anyone that you murdered the world?”

“Please don’t be dramatic. I told you we didn’t do it on purpose. But it’s not something I’d like to take to my grave. I’ve come to grips with the part I played in all this, and I need to make it right, if such a thing could ever be said to be right again. That’s why I’ve been seeking you out so desperately, Mr. Schuett. You are now the key.”

Edward looked to Rae. “Put the gun down.”

“It’s not up.”

“I can see it, Rae. It’s slowly going up to point at his head. Put it down. For now.”

It was the last two words that seemed to convince her. She lowered the rifle but didn’t put the safety back on. Edward was okay with that. Rage and anger at this man were only two of the roiling emotions in his head that he couldn’t possibly map at the moment. If what he said was true, then on some level he was responsible for the deaths of Julia and Dana, even Liddie. Edward knew it was ridiculous, putting the blame for the deaths of three random people on this fragile old man when the blood of millions more was ignored, but that was all it came down to for Edward right now. These next few minutes were the doctor’s chance to make amends, at least to Edward. Whether or not Rae would follow that reasoning was up to her, but for now Dr. Bloss could make his case.

“Explain,” Edward said to him. “Everything. Start at the beginning.”

“The beginning,” Dr. Bloss said. “Let’s see, where’s the beginning?” He actually turned around in place as though he were looking for it. “Oh! I suppose that would be Project: Queen.”

He paused, looking at them both as though that explained everything. Rae made a hurry-up motion with her hand. “Which is?” she prodded impatiently.

“I guess you could call it a sort of bio-weapons program. For the government. That’s how it all started out. Isn’t that how things always start out? Yes, something like that.”

“Those sons-of-bitches,” Rae said. “You can’t trust them now, so I guess you couldn’t trust them then.”

“Wait,” Edward said. “The government created a zombie virus as a biological weapon? How did they actually expect to control it?”

“They didn’t, because that is not what they were trying to do. I was part of project designed to add enhancements to certain soldiers. It was supposed to be a new way of communicating in combat, a method that could not be intercepted or hacked by enemies and could silently allow complex groups to coordinate their maneuvers. The basic idea started with how certain lower species communicate, and we were trying to find a way to get a similar effect in humans.”

“Pheromones,” Edward said. “It was never supposed to be about raising the dead, but about giving people a way to communicate through pheromones. Is that right?”

“Oh yes, very good. You’re correct, after a fashion. What we came up with was actually far more complicated than that, but the idea was similar.”

“I’m not sure I’m following that,” Rae said. “If these fair-o things were just about communicating, how did we end up with zeds?”

“The reanimated were a completely unexpected byproduct of something else we were trying to do with the project. We wanted to give soldiers these abilities, but we were having trouble doing it with any speed. We’d thought we had figured out how to manipulate DNA to the necessary glands and sensory organs, but the process was very slow and very painful. One of my colleagues thought he could speed up the process and essentially get the pain over with in one quick moment. He’s the one that made it into a virus. I assure you, the rest of us would have stopped him if we had known. I spent years trying to figure out the exact nature of it. What I concluded is that there was a flaw in the virus’s structure. It caused the new growth, but that growth was unstable and it tried to break down. Essential parts of the rest of the body would slow down almost to a stop to redirect all their energy into the new growth, which never quite finished and therefore never stopped. In attempting to heal the new growths, other parts of the body would try to heal rapidly too, at least to a point. That is why the reanimated appear dead yet don’t decay beyond a certain point.”

“If you worked for the government,” Edward said, “why did the CRS apparently not know any of this?”

“It was so secret that there was no official record of our science team,” Dr. Bloss replied. “We were stationed not far from here in Rockford. When the outbreak—or the Uprising, as people ended up calling it—began, the rest of my team was the first to be affected. I was lucky, I suppose. I chose the wrong, or maybe the right, moment to go get a late lunch from outside the facility. So I wasn’t in the main lab when it started. I still don’t know to this day who got infected first or how, but I was able to live and find shelter when things suddenly became much worse.”

“But someone in the government still had to know you were there, right?” Rae said. “You said you still have contacts everywhere.”

“You’re correct. There are still certain people who know I exist. Unfortunately, there are not as many as there used to be. If there were, I might have been able to get you sent directly to me, Mr. Schuett, and not to those brainless twits in the CRS.”

“Why not work with the CRS?” Edward asked. “If you’d been helping, you could have shared your research and knowledge with them and stopped things from getting as bad as they did.”

“Oh, there were times when I wanted to. Many times. Then I would find out from my contacts about how this person wanted to control the reanimated as a weapon, or how that person was experimenting on live human subjects. It’s something the government didn’t want the public to know, even if they did declare it in the public’s best interest. The final straw was Atlanta. My contacts were able to tell me things about what was happening in Atlanta before it was burned from the face of the planet. The Z5s and Z6s were no accident, no matter what official line the CRS may have given you, Mr. Schuett. It was people not taking the correct safety precautions, people jumping to conclusions without accurately putting them to the test first. In short, they were doing exactly what my team in Rockford had done, and I wasn’t going to be a part of that again.”

“Then here’s the question,” Edward said. “What does all this have to do with me? How did you make the first Z7? Why release me again out into the wild? Why did you pick me in the first place?”

Dr. Bloss blinked at him. “Mr. Schuett, what are you talking about?”

“What do you mean, what am I talking about? Look at me! I’m that theoretical Z7 the CRS was looking for all those years. If you were the one researching fixing the problem, why just let your answer out to wander in the world?”

Dr. Bloss looked away from them both. “I’m sorry. You seem to be operating under a false assumption. I didn’t do anything to make a Z7. You are purely an accident.”

“Wait, what? How can I be an accident?”

“You’re exactly what the CRS thought you were. Somewhere in your genetic makeup there was just something different. A tiny difference, maybe some junk DNA that wouldn’t even have affected you had you lived out your life naturally. But the virus, constantly trying to evolve, constantly trying to fix your DNA, finally got to a point where it could change. The mistake that was written into the virus in the first place was no longer a mistake when combined with the right random mix. I’m sorry, but you’re completely unplanned, and not part of some great plan to fix everything. You’re just a freak happening.”

Edward held one of the tables for balance. Completely unplanned. Everything that had happened to him had not been for a reason at all. Liddie’s death hadn’t been some sacrifice for a greater purpose, and worse yet there had never been a way to save her. There wouldn’t be a way to save anyone else, either.

“There’s no way to create a Z7 again,” Edward whispered. “I’m the only one.”

“I never said that,” Dr. Bloss said.

Edward looked back at him. “But you just said…”

“That you’re the only one, yes. That you happened purely without any intent, correct. But Z7s? That’s why I wanted you here all along. It happened once, it can happen again. I can be the one to do it.”

“You…you can bring others back? You can make people human again?”

“Only as far as you’ve come back. I don’t think I can ever reverse the change fully. But I do think that, with enough studying of you, I can make other reanimated into Z7s. Maybe not all of them. It’s all in a person’s DNA. But I can do it to some. With enough work, maybe one day I can even do it to most.”

“Zeds as humans again,” Rae whispered. “On a large scale.”

“We can do it, Mr. Schuett,” Dr. Bloss said. “You and I together.”

This was huge. It felt like something Edward should have needed to think about. If Dr. Bloss could really do this, it would change the world. Everything Edward had seen since waking up could be, if not exactly reversed, then at least repaired to some degree. But the colossal possible effects of this were not the first thing that came to mind. Instead he thought of Dana, of Julia, of Liddie. Lives that could have been saved if this moment had come sooner.

There was really nothing to think about.

“Where do we start?” Edward asked.

Dr. Bloss smiled. “We start by celebrating, I think.”

“Rae?” Edward asked. “Can we count on you to help us on this?”

“On the fixing of things or the celebrating?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“I don’t know what I can help fix, but I suppose there might be people who have a problem with helping zeds. I can be your security for that. As for celebrating, if there’s alcohol involved I’m sure me and the others can help.”

Edward smiled. “Do you think you can find something like that?”

“I’m sure we can figure something out.” She pulled out her walkie-talkie. “Hey, Cory. Guess what? I’ve got a special mission for someone.”

They all listened for an answer, but nothing came.

“Cory, you there?”

There was a pause. “Rae? We’ve got a serious problem. Some old acquaintances of both us and your friend Edward are here.”

“Who?”

“Merton and the CRS.”

Chapter Forty

Despite Dr. Bloss’s assurances that he would be fine at the library while they went to find out what was going on, Edward and Rae insisted he come with them. Edward wasn’t sure what Rae’s thoughts were on the matter, but he had a suspicion they wouldn’t be able to come back for him later. Unless this was just a small group sent here to scout the area and find if Edward or Rae was really here, the CRS and Merton wouldn’t be people they could fight off and expect to never come back. Their only option, as Edward saw it, was to run.

They all got into the car, and Rae sped down the roads without any of the care she had shown on the way here. Edward stared out the back window as the library disappeared behind them. All of Dr. Bloss’s research was in there, fifty years worth of studying zombies in a way the CRS had never even thought to try, right along with all of his equipment. If the doctor really could eventually find a way to turn all zombies into Z7s, he would have to start now from scratch. For a man as old as Bloss, there was no guarantee he could remember key details or even that he would live long enough to recreate it. But as long as they kept the old man with them and alive, they still kept hope.

There was no sign of intruders at the Culver’s, but all the ATVs had returned. Edward noticed that, even in the group’s hurry to get back here, they had all still parked the ATVs facing away from the store. The better to escape, Edward realized.

Rae pulled the car into the Culver’s parking lot, making sure it too was lined up for people to get in easily from the main door and then go straight on out into the street. Cory had reported before they left the library that the two groups were close but not quite here yet, so there was at least enough time to grab all the supplies Rae had packed away inside. Rae ran inside with Dr. Bloss toddling along behind her. Edward, seeing the way he moved, brought up the rear and did his best to act as the doctor’s shield. If anyone from Merton was here yet and decided to take a potshot just for giggles, it would be better for Edward to get hit instead of the doctor. Edward could survive any body shot. He just hoped any theoretical snipers didn’t realize who he was yet and aim for the head.

Dr. Bloss, looking all around himself like the Culver’s was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen in the world, ran right into Rae as soon as they got in. She’d stopped at the old registers and stared at something on the floor in front of her, but Edward didn’t see what it was at first. All he saw was Cory, Luke, and Jojo standing around with guns in their hands. Edward moved around Rae and Dr. Bloss to see that all weapons in the room were pointed at Larissa. The girl was on her knees in front of them with her hands on her head. There were tears streaming down her dirty cheeks, but no one looked sympathetic to her.

“What exactly is going on?” Rae asked.

“I caught her sneaking outside to make a call to someone. That’s how we found out,” Cory said.

“Did you check her phone to see who she was calling?” Rae asked.

“No, it looks like it’s programmed weird. Nothing I’ve seen before. Some really new model. But I did overhear her say something about where we’re located, and that you guys had gone to the library.”

“Did you ask her anything else?” Rae asked.

“No, we figured you’re running the show and would have a better idea what to be asking her.”

“Okay then, talk,” Rae said to Larissa. She snapped off the safety once again on Spanky.

“Please don’t kill me,” Larissa said.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Rae said, pressing Spanky’s barrel against her head, “if you start talking. Are you still working for Merton?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry. I never actually quit them. They gave me a job, to keep track of you. They’d never actually trusted me with anything important before, and I just wanted to prove I could do it.”

“I can’t really say I blame you. There might have been a time when I would have done the same,” Rae said, but she didn’t move her rifle from the girl’s head. “If you told them this was where we went, why didn’t they come after us sooner in the week?”

“You weren’t a high priority at the moment, except I guess that changed when that woman from the CRS called them and said Schuett was on his way here.”

“Woman? Which woman?” Edward asked.

“Her name is Dr. Chella. She’s the one that gave me the phone.”

“Fuck!” Edward said. “That bitch. I thought I was done with her.”

“Not exactly a friend of yours?” Rae asked.

“Only if friends like to cut each other wide open and inspect their insides.”

“Hmph. Typical of the CRS,” Dr. Bloss said. “Why cut a specimen wide open when all you really need is a hole large enough to reach in and feel around with? Can’t really see what you’re doing, but the joy of accidentally finding squishy new things is part of the fun.”

“I really hope you’re joking,” Edward said.

“I think I am,” Dr. Bloss said. “Can never be sure anymore, though.”

“How did she even know to look for Edward here?” Rae asked.

“I don’t know. Something about a map and a van.”

“Crap,” Edward said. “The computer in the van we stole must have still had the map we programmed into it. They must have found it.”

“I didn’t know, and I really didn’t care,” Larissa said. “I just did what I was told. Please, just let me go.”

“Not yet,” Rae said. “How long do we have before they get here?”

“I don’t know. A couple minutes, maybe? They’re waiting outside the south part of town, just far enough away that the patrols wouldn’t see them. I was supposed to give them another call once you and Schuett got back, and they would ambush the place. When I don’t call in, they’ll realize something is wrong.”

“Do we still have the phone?” Rae asked Cory.

He indicated the phone where it sat next to a register. “Right there. How do you want to play this?”

Rae looked back at Larissa. “Was there any other situation where you were supposed to call them?”

“Um. Uh, yeah, there was. If it looked like you were going to stay at the library for much longer, they were going to reposition and take you there.”

“I’m hoping you mean they were going to try taking us alive,” Edward said.

“Only Rae and the others. You that woman wants dead. They’ve got instructions to aim for the head. They never said anything about the old man, but I guess they don’t care what happens to him.”

“They will once they see what’s at the library,” Rae said. “But we can use that as our distraction.”

“But my research!” Dr. Bloss said. “Letting them have any of it would be like letting a child use a precisely tuned guitar as a hammer for smashing protons.”

“Doctor, I don’t think that actually made sense,” Edward said.

“Of course it does.”

“I’m sorry, Doc,” Rae said, “but it’s either sacrifice everything you have at the library or let them catch us. Cory, hand me the phone.” He gave her the phone, and Rae held it near Larissa’s ear. “Stop crying, and don’t do anything else to tip them off. You’re going to tell them that me and Edward are planning to stick around the library for another hour or so. If you do what we say, we won’t fill that empty little head of yours with bullets before we leave. Got it?”

She nodded, but before Rae could press the call button Edward grabbed her by the wrist.

“What is it?” Rae asked.

He could smell it all around them. That distinctive scent of meat, of prey, of everything that was other than him. “It’s too late. They’re here.”

“Everyone, get low!” Rae said. The ducked down by the counter, but there they could probably still be seen outside through the broken windows. It wasn’t just the smell now. Edward could hear movement all around them, the shuffling of fabric or the rustle of walking through tall grass.

“Larissa, how many people are out there?” Rae whispered.

“I don’t know. No one told me.”

Edward closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Twenty…twenty-four…no, twenty five. I think. Some of them might be farther away than I can smell.”

“Okay, that is just creepy,” Jojo said.

“Can you tell where they are?” Rae asked.

“No, not exactly. They’re spread all around.”

“No areas where they have more people grouped up than somewhere else?”

“No.”

“Not a very good formation,” Cory said.

“Yeah, well, what do you expect? It’s Merton.”

“They’re getting closer,” Edward said. “Any moment now, they’ll be coming on in.”

“Everybody cover the exits,” Rae said. “Cory, go to that window over there and concentrate your fire on the area away from the vehicles. Maybe we can get them to think we’re going that way, and then we go the other.”

“Won’t they see through that?” Luke said.

“Fuck, how should I know? Probably, yeah, I guess they would, but I don’t have any other idea.”

“I do,” Edward said.

They all looked at him. “Well?” Rae asked.

“Give me the phone,” he said. Rae handed him the phone, but she didn’t look very certain.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

“I haven’t had the slightest clue what I’ve been doing since I woke up in that Walmart,” he said. “Why start now?”

He pushed the call button and concentrated as the other end rang. After only one ring an all-too familiar voice answered. “We’re already in position. Now would be the time to get out of there if you want to live long enough to get paid.”

“You’re paying me now, Dr. Chella?” Edward said. “You know, I might have been more cooperative in Stanford if you’d done that sooner.”

“You,” Dr. Chella said. “Did you kill the girl?”

“Why do you automatically assume that’s what we would do?”

“I’ve read Neuman’s files. She’s the sort of loose cannon that would do something exactly like that.”

Edward smiled at Rae. “The good doctor doesn’t have a very high opinion of you.”

Rae rolled her eyes and made a jerking-off gesture with her hand.

“I’m assuming that means the feeling’s mutual,” he said into the phone.

“Doesn’t matter about the girl,” Chella said. “You’re surrounded and there’s no way out. We’re only here for you. If you come out quietly your friends can go.”

“That’s not the way your girl told it.”

“I can only speak for myself. Merton’s problems with Neuman are their own to deal with.”

“And what exactly happens to me if I do go out there?” Edward asked.

“I’d take you and Miss Gates back to Stanford. You for study, and Gates for trial.”

Edward winced. She still hadn’t realized that Liddie was gone. That didn’t matter right now. He was almost ready. He just needed to keep her talking.

“Study? Really? That’s certainly not what I hear you were trying to do when we left.”

“The president has had a change of heart. He wanted me personally to bring you in, as he feels you may be useful for other things.”

“As a weapon, right? A way to control zombies?”

Dr. Bloss mouthed the words I told you so to him. Edward ignored it.

“I’m not just a weapon or a thing,” Edward said. “I deserve the same rights as everyone else. You can’t use me in this way.”

“You are a zombie,” Chella said. “Legally you’re nothing but a dead body. And your dead body is now going to be property of the U.S. government.”

“I don’t think so. I’m leaving here. My friends inside are coming with me. And all my friends surrounding you are, too. If every single person out there doesn’t put down their weapons right now, then I will not have any problem with them eating you.”

All she gave in reply was a choked sound. He had to imagine the rest of her reaction. Right about now she was probably looking around herself and realizing she was no longer the one with the upper hand. While he’d been talking to her, he’d also been talking to every zombie within a two or three mile radius. He hadn’t been able to bring them all in—they’d become too spread out for that—but he’d been able to call back most of them. Through the pheromones he could tell that a few were still shuffling toward the Culver’s, but at least thirty others were in a ring behind Chella’s men. Every one of the Merton people had been so focused on keeping their guns aimed at the windows and doors that they hadn’t even paid attention the zombies quietly coming up behind them. Some of the zombies had gotten very close, up to almost ten feet.

Chella finally got enough of a hold of herself to speak again. “This is stupid. My people can take out these things before they can attack us. You’re bluffing.”

“I don’t think they can. Rae knows the ways of Merton pretty well, and she doesn’t seem too terribly afraid of them.”

“There no way you could do it without losing some of your zombies,” Chella said. “I saw the way you treated that creature back in the lab. You really do think of yourself as one of them. You wouldn’t put any of them in danger.”

“Maybe you’re right. I wouldn’t dare let most of them get hurt. The key word there, though? It’s most.”

A simple thought, a command released onto the wind, the scent of honey intended for one zombie and one alone. With the walls of the Culver’s in the way it took a moment for that one to receive the message, but it could still smell Edward through the open windows. There was a shriek through the phone, then it cut out as gunshots echoed outside. Everything went silent for a second, then there was screaming.

“Everyone hold your fire!” Chella shouted. “For the love of God, do not shoot!”

“This is it,” Edward said. “Let’s go.”

He stood up and walked to the door. Everyone else stood along with them, but they were all hesitant to move.

“Um, what exactly just happened?” Luke asked.

“Not exactly a good time to ask questions,” Rae said. “Just take advantage of it.” She started to follow Edward.

“Wait, what are we going to do with her?” Cory asked, pointing to Larissa with his rifle.

Rae stopped and went back to her. “A promise is a promise. But you stay in here until we’re gone. If I ever see your face again I’ll blow it off your head, got it?”

Larissa nodded.

The rest of them followed Edward out the door and stopped at the ATVs. Most of the Merton people had moved over to this side of the building, but Edward had made the zombies shadow them the whole way. All of them looked scared as all hell, but none so much as Dr. Chella. Her phone and a handgun were on the ground at her feet, but it didn’t appear that she’d had any chance to turn around and use the gun. The walking corpse that had once been Billy Horton was behind her, his hands tightly gripping her arms and his mouth only inches away from the skin of her neck. He looked like he was bleeding from his shoulder and side, the results of shots the Merton people had gotten off before he’d grabbed her. Edward had to strain to keep him in that position. The shock of being shot combined with the smell of fresh prey right in front of him was making Horton confused and hungry, but as long as nothing went wrong Edward thought he could keep the zombie under control.

“Everyone, put your weapons down,” Edward said. Everyone from Merton hesitated, most of them looking at the zombies creeping up around them.

“What exactly do you think is going to happen?” Chella asked. “We will find you.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Edward said. “You don’t really want me. You want what you can learn from me. And if that’s all you want, all you need is a trip to the library.”

Dr. Bloss made a yelping noise like a small dog with its tail stepped on. Edward held up his hand to him in a stopping gesture. “It’s the only way to get them to leave us alone for good. We can still go on if we just have you, can’t we?”

“I…I think so.”

“Then it’s just like that,” Edward said. “You get everything in the library, we get to leave and go in peace. And when I say we, I’m mean all of us.” He gestured at the zombies gathered around them.

For a moment Dr. Chella looked like she considered it, then she smiled. “No.”

There was a click, and Edward felt a handgun pressed against the back of his head. Edward didn’t dare move, but everyone else turned to look at the girl who had snuck up behind them.

“Dr. Chella,” Larissa said. “I hope you still intend to pay me.”

“Consider yourself as getting a bonus,” Chella said.

“Where did you even get a gun?” Rae asked.

“Shit,” Cory said. “Rae, I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance to clear all the weapons out of the emergency supplies.”

“Now you guys are all the ones that need to put down your guns,” Larissa said. “Consider them ours now.”

Edward caught Rae’s eye. She should have been scared or worried at a moment like this, but all Edward could see was that she was pissed. He took a deep breath. He had a feeling that if he wanted to keep control of the other zombies in the next few seconds, he was really going to need to concentrate hard.

“How many times to I have to tell people?” Rae said. “Nobody… takes… my… Spanky!” Edward attempted to dodge to his right just as Rae brought up her rifle. It erupted in gunfire even before she had it fully brought to bear on the girl, but that was enough. Edward spun, trying to see what was happening, and watched as blood exploded from Larissa’s stomach. It also brought his face dangerously close to Larissa’s handgun. She convulsed, pulling the trigger and sending a bullet right in front of Edward’s nose.

That was enough to make him lose concentration.

Dr. Chella jerked herself loose just as Horton went for her neck, and the instant she was away the nearest Merton merc brought up his rifle and shot Horton in the head. Had it not been for that, Edward still might have been able to keep hold of the other zombies. But the sudden burst of pheromones from Horton caused all the zombies to moan at once and back away from the scene. The Mertons all saw this as their opportunity.

“Fire!” Chella screamed. The Mertons opened up on their targets, but not all of them were very good shots even at close range, and one or two made the terrible mistake of not going for headshots. The zombies came at them, and the air was filled with screams and moans and blood and exploded pieces of reanimated brains and skulls.

Edward dropped to the ground, feeling several bullets fly over his head. Next to him Rae’s people also opened fire on the Mertons, but even though they were right in the open almost no one shot back. The Mertons all had their hands full.

No, stop, Edward tried to say through the pheromones. Everyone stop, don’t do this! But for several seconds it all continued. That was all the time it took for the entire fight to run its course. The gunfire ended, and Edward looked up at the carnage around him.

Most of the Mertons were dead, but so were most of the zombies. A few of the Mertons had been shot and were trying to crawl away from the creatures they were sure would smell their blood and try to rip apart their flesh, but Edward had regained enough control to keep the zombies from going back into a frenzy. He could smell new pheromone scents being added to the air too, as a few of the Mertons twitched on the ground from their zombie bites. Edward looked over at Rae’s group, but they seemed okay. Jojo had been grazed on the shoulder, but that was all. They all crouched there on the ground, shocked by the sudden beginning and end to the violence. Only Rae moved, walking over to the gutshot Larissa by the door. The girl didn’t look like she would last for very long.

“And just what the fuck was it I told you?” Rae said, then stuck Spanky in Larissa’s face. Edward had the sense to turn his head away before she pulled the trigger.

“Dr. Bloss, are you okay?” Edward asked. He had huddled among Jojo, Cory, and Luke, but he poked his head up to look at Edward.

“That was, um, interesting,” he said. Then he went back to huddling.

Edward stood up and moved among the bodies. So many dead, both human and reanimated. He couldn’t help but feel like he should have somehow been able to stop this. If he had been able to keep better control over the zombies, or if he had handled the situation better, or else maybe…

He stopped in mid-thought as he saw who was sprawled out on her back right in front of him in the parking lot. Horton hadn’t managed to bite Dr. Chella, but her own security detail had succeeded in doing the damage the zombie couldn’t. Her hand was mangled and there was a little blood seeping from underneath her, but Edward had no idea how bad the wound was. She looked up at him, her face still in shock and her eyes not exactly focusing on him.

“Help me,” she whispered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Please… shot.”

Rae walked over to join him. She pointed Spanky at the woman’s chest, but he motioned for her to turn it away.

“Do you think she’s going to die?” Edward asked.

“Probably, unless she thought to have other people like a medic nearby in case she needed them. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.”

“I have a better question, then,” Edward said. “Does she deserve to die?”

“Don’t ask me that,” Rae said. “You’ve got more of a history with her than I do.”

Edward knelt down by Chella’s side. Her breathing looked shallow, and the pool of blood under her still grew. “You were going to have me killed, Chella. Or experimented on, or turned into a weapon, or whatever. Liddie wouldn’t have died if she didn’t want to save me from all that. None of these people would have died if you had just left it alone. All because you thought I was a monster.”

He wasn’t sure if she understood him right now, but he felt the need to continue. “Do you still think that? Am I the monster here?”

Dr. Chella barely managed to croak out the word. “…yes…”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Edward said. “Since in my mind it’s the other way around.”

He took her broken hand, raised it gently to his mouth, and bit.

Rae fidgeted by his side. “Are you sure that was what you wanted to do? Even after everything that has happened, you didn’t strike me as the kind of person that could kill someone.”

“That’s not me killing her. That’s me saving her,” Edward said. Dr. Chella began to shiver, and he left her to finish the change while he helped the others pack up.

Chapter Forty One

As much as Dr. Bloss wanted to stay in Winnebago now that the immediate threat was over, both Edward and Rae decided that would be a bad idea. Even with Dr. Chella gone, both the CRS and Merton would still be looking for them. They were at least able to pack up the most important parts of Dr. Bloss’s research. Then they all headed north.

There was a lot of talk over the next several days about what to do next. Rae kept by her word to help protect everything that Edward and Dr. Bloss intended to do. After all, the attack in Winnebago had been proof enough of what some people would do to get what Dr. Bloss could create. She offered the rest of her crew the chance to leave, but they stayed. They were loyal to Rae down to the last. Edward thought that was pretty impressive for someone who had originally been a lowly gate guard.

The going was tough. Dr. Bloss had to frequently stop off in towns to check on his “contacts,” although he still refused to divulge any further information about them. His contacts at least kept the money flowing. They needed it if they were going to try remaking Dr. Bloss’s lab somewhere else. The journey was even further complicated by the zombie horde that followed them. Edward insisted on bringing every zombie they could find. There was no telling which ones might react to Dr. Bloss’s theoretical treatment. Any chance for bringing just one other person back and giving them a second chance on life was enough for Edward.

Weeks passed, and they continued searching for the right place to stop. When they stopped for the night Rae would often go off by herself to scout ahead, leaving Edward to look after the horde and the others. Sometimes he could sleep, sometimes he couldn’t. He still had occasional memories that mixed in with his dreams, but they no longer had that awful red tint. Sometimes he dreamt of Julia or Dana or Liddie. At first these dreams were nightmares. As time passed, they were not.

It was one of these latter dreams that Rae woke him from one night nearly a month after the events in Winnebago. One moment he was with Liddie, hugging her and wishing things had turned out differently while she assured him everything would be all right in the end. The next Rae was shaking him awake. The sun had just started to rise, but all the others were asleep yet accept for Jojo, who was on guard duty for the horde. All the time they’d spent with Edward had calmed the zombies’ disposition and they could often be allowed out of his presence for hours at a time without starting to look at the rest of the group as a snack, but it still paid to have someone watching and making sure.

“Edward,” Rae said as he sat up from the bedroll he’d laid on the open ground. “I think this is it. I think we’ve found the perfect place.”

Edward followed her without saying anything. He trusted her judgment completely, but he was still surprised when they came over a hill and looked down to where she was talking about. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Edward said. “When we said we were going to find a place for a new lab and possible colony to turn zombies to Z7s, I was kind of thinking…”

“Yes, I’m sure I can guess what you were thinking. But what I’m thinking is that there would be no place more fitting that this. Come on. Tell me I’m not right.”

He couldn’t tell her that. Further in the distance he could see the ruins of yet another town, abandoned to time just like so many other places they had passed, but this was farther away from still occupied towns and cities. There would probably be plenty of supplies and building materials to find there. But the town was not what Rae meant. She meant the huge block of a building immediately at the bottom of the hill. It was the empty remains of an old Walmart.

“It would provide plenty of shelter,” Rae said. “Plenty of space to keep the zombies, and parts of it could be built up into better living areas once there are more Z7s. This could be it. This could be your new zombie colony. What do you say?”

He nodded. All his facial muscles worked into a smile, and for the first time in far too long Edward Schuett laughed.