The Zombie Letters (40 page)

              "They said the same thing when Einstein started out . . ." the old man mumbled with the slightest of smiles.

              "Who's Einstein?" Daniel said.

              The old man closed his mouth quickly, seemingly catching himself from something. "Nobody. Forget it. Listen . . ." Theodore stopped and faced his young friend. They stood together in the middle of the field among the tall, swaying grass. The pale yellow sun shone brightly overhead, bathing them in its assuring warmth. Another beautiful, sunny day. "Did you know that ancient humans may have had automobiles?" Theo said.

              "Gimme a break, where did you hear that?" Daniel said, laughing.

              The old man shrugged it off with a smile, as if he wasn't going to dignify anyone with a response. There was a look in his eye, a crook in his smile that seemed so out-of place. Whenever he talked history, especially of the ancients, he spoke like he already
knew
. Like none of this was theory at all. "That island you live on off of the east coast . . . you know there used to be a city there?"

              "Where I live? Now who is sounding nuts? That place is farmland as far as the eye can see, you old bat."

              "Nope. Manhattan used to be a vast, sprawling city with buildings that were so tall, they touched the sky." Daniel looked at his best friend and mentor as he said it. He had such a brightness in his eyes and Daniel noticed it. He didn't look like he was simply telling a story. He looked like a man reminiscing.

              "You got that twinkle goin' on again. You always talk like you've been there or something."

              "Yeah . . ." the old man said. He sounded slightly strange for a moment. Almost sad.

              "Manhattan is a myth, Pop. Just a bunch of stories passed down by theologians. My little sister knows more science than they do."

              "Perhaps you're right," Theodore said. "No way to prove it anyway. At least not for quite awhile. Keep with it, son. All those things I helped you with . . . I have never led you astray. You will be fine."

              "I always wondered how you got all these ideas. It’s like you pull them out of some mental catalogue of things the world needs. Remember when you made that call to Abnerdeen Corporation about that . . . what did you call it again?”

“Television,” Theo said.

“Yeah, that’s right. Can’t wait to see that one. When I was a kid, I would read about you all the time. I used to imagine that you have some secret library in your head. I was always bashful to ask you where all of your brilliant theories came from."

              "Oh . . . here and there." Theodore smiled and put his arm around the young man. Walking back to the small home on the horizon, the old man started whistling. Daniel wasn't aware they had walked that far from the house. They walked together until they almost neared Theodore's house in silence. No man said anything until they could both nearly touch the front door. "Want to come inside for some tea? Haven't seen you in a dog’s age."

              "I can't, Theo. I gotta go. Why don’t you come back to the center with me for awhile? You can be a lot of help there. It won’t take much to get your feet wet again."

              "I told ya, boy. I am too old to be running around labs and things like that," the great man chuckled and cleared his throat.

              "You're not too old for it, Pop."

              "Trust me, Danny . . . I am
much
older than I look."

              They walked around the house and Daniel went inside to use the phone and have a cab pick him up. Theodore was in the kitchen, making himself a pot of tea on the stove. Daniel called the cab company and hung up. Walking into the kitchen, he saw that the old man wasn't in there. "Pop?"

              "Come out to the shed, bud! I have something I wanna show you!"

Daniel walked out of the back door and took the short walk to the shed. Theodore sure got around well for someone that had to have been pushing eighty. He was in the large, furnished garage. It looked like a little apartment in there. It was drywalled and carpeted with its own heat and one of those portable air conditioning units that just hit the market. Damn thing even had a bathroom. Daniel had only seen it when the old man was having it built. The last time he saw 'the shed,' (which was nearly half the size of the one-bedroom house) it was just a wooden skeleton.

              Professor Copeland stared in awe. The walls were completely covered, floor to ceiling, in old books.
These
were the ancient texts the old man had in storage for so long. Daniel had only heard about his collection from other admirers. Some colleagues in the field said it didn’t even exist. Copeland had known this man for twenty years and had never seen it. He'd asked about the collection a couple times, but Theo was so modest. He would always say, 'yeah, I have a few books.' This was a hell of a lot more than a few. "Oh, my God . . . they weren't shitting about your collection, were they?"

              "Nope. Not at all. Just got these out of a very special storage facility made for me years ago so I could keep them preserved properly," Theo said as he took a seat at the far wall behind a large oak desk. A strange mechanical device was attached to the wall behind his chair. It looked like two large tubes side by side that hissed every few seconds. Every time it did, Daniel's ears popped. He had never seen anything like that before, but it was probably one of Theo's pet projects. The machine, no doubt used to air seal or protect the room, looked so strange and new to him, but seemed old at the same time . . . like finding a sportscar inside Noah's Ark.

              "I can't believe I'm in this room. This collection of written material is something anyone would love to see even for just a second. I know guys who would kill to see this room. How
old
are some of these?" Daniel asked as he scanned the wall-to-wall shelves.

              "Some just a few. Some books are a few hundred years old. I have some papers, scrolls and the like sealed in lock boxes that date back up to nearly two thousand years. Then there are a couple that are . . . much older than that."

              "Too bad the written word is only about eight to ten thousand years old. I wish we could go back to the beginning. This library is so impressive," Daniel said, walking the perimeter wall and running his hand smoothly across the old spines. He grabbed one off the shelf and gently held it in front of him. He had never seen a bound book so old before. The leather around the outside was nearly worn away by God knew how long it had been handled by people. Daniel opened the book carefully and flipped one page. The copyright on it . . . it was gone. It had been rubbed away. The rest of the page looked fine and actually quite well-preserved, but the date was gone. Daniel put that one back on the shelf and grabbed another, gently turning it to the copyright page. Again, just the date was missing. He looked up at the old man seated at his desk. He smiled and raised his eyebrows in an impressed manner. That smile would have looked condescending if Daniel didn't know him as well as he did. Daniel walked across to the other wall, to where the books looked even older than the ones he had just handled. Picking it up and turning it to the copyright page . . . his eye caught it immediately. The date. Gone. It wasn't just missing on any of the books. It was rubbed out. On each, it appeared as though the ink had been smeared purposefully. The young professor stood with the open book in his hands and thumbed through it. Books didn't look like this anymore. It was exquisite. Just to see how things were printed back then . . . beautiful. Looking at a random page, Daniel read it with a wonder in his heart he rarely felt.

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

              "A Tale of Two Cities . . ." Daniel said, closing the book and examining the writing on the spine. "Charles Dickens. Hmm . . . never heard of him. When was this book written? Is this one of the older ones in here?"

              "It has been around awhile . . .
the
oldest?" Theo chuckled. "Not by a longshot. Come out back with me. I want to show you something." Daniel placed the book back on the shelf and followed his friend out the same door he came in. It hissed shut behind them and locked on its own.

              “Did that just lock by itse . . .”

              “Come on,” Theo interrupted. He never interrupted people. Something was so strange about that room . . . how that thing against the wall was something that
had
to be new. One cannot just buy something like that at a store, but it looked so used. Almost as old as those ancient books. Locks don’t just turn on by themselves, either.

What the hell is he working on?

Theodore stopped at the old greenhouse. Daniel remembered this place very well. Pop had built it when he first bought the house. Beautiful plants were in there that don’t or can’t grow on the East coast at all. Plamara plants from Hawaii, banana trees, any kind of rare and colorful flower one can imagine. Theodore had a room in the one-acre greenhouse with just lilacs in it. That was it. Just a room full of lilacs. It smelled like heaven in there. Daniel remembered being young and studying in that greenhouse. His entire apprenticeship was spent in that huge Fiberglas and plastic building. Sometimes, after the long days of school and personal tutoring, Daniel Copeland would sleep in the rose room. The lilacs were his favorite, but he loved the smell so much that he couldn’t sleep. How many days were spent in that old greenhouse . . . working, studying, having a few beers and just kicking back . . . talking about women and the fraternity conquests they’d made in their first years earning the doctorate. Those were the best times of Daniel’s life. An entire lifetime was spent in that one-acre square building. It seemed that way to him, at least. For him, this was the most sacred place on planet Earth.

“Wow . . . haven’t been in here for a long time,” Daniel Copeland said as his best friend and mentor grabbed a key hanging around his neck and used it to open the thick metal door. The legendary Professor Theodore Cunningham opened it and immediately a very strange smell wafted into Daniel’s nostrils. The place didn’t smell the same. Gone was the aroma of everything from small orange trees, blackberry bushes, roses of every color and exotic plants from all over the world . . . the smell he eagerly anticipated. That scent of boyhood. The scent of carefree days and the expansion of knowledge, when a man already a legend in science traded the entire platinum years of his retirement to help a young boy in the community simply because his mother asked. What replaced those feelings and senses he wanted to feel . . . no . . .
needed
to feel . . . was something so shockingly different. It had such a musty smell to it now, like a swamp baking in the hottest of summer heat. It wafted out of the open door as if a giant mouth had blown on them. It was enough to make Daniel’s eyes water.

“Good God, that smells horrible,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. The air coming out of there was extremely humid. He knew that just standing in there for a few moments was enough for someone to break a sweat. “What the hell are you doing in here? Raising skunks or something?”

“Come inside.”

Daniel walked in. It was a little easier to breathe in here, though it was extremely humid. Just as he thought, he could already feel flushed. This room was at least one hundred degrees and one hundred percent humid . . . like a dense forest with a blocked canopy. The whole greenhouse was filled with rows upon rows of one plant now. They stood about eight feet tall; really lanky stalks that branched out in three or four bulbs about the size of footballs. A couple of the bulbs were open like hands folded out. Along the edges of the soft, pink pads inside the open bulbs were tendrils and sensitive hairs that swayed lightly in the breeze.

“Venus Flytraps . . .” Daniel said in awe. “I have never even read about carnivorous plants this massive. Did you engineer these somehow?”

“I know you are busy,” Theodore said, completely disregarding his former student’s question. He walked to one of the huge plants and reached into the soil at his feet. He carefully moved his hand around under the dirt and removed two large seeds about the size of bottle caps. Theo looked at them for a moment, smiled and walked them to a large metal bin at the corner. It was about the size of one of those old steamer trunks. Opening a hinged lid at the top of the wooden box, Theo tossed in the two seeds. The box was filled to the top. As Daniel broke his gaze at the almost alien-like plants stretching out before him, he noticed more boxes along the far wall. There was one every five feet or so. All the way down. All filled with seeds. “I know you are busy . . . but I have something that may be of interest to your health and medicine research lab. I was wondering if you could bring something to their attention for me.”

“Sure, Pop, what is it?”