Zombies! Episode 1 - Shawn of the Dead (5 page)

"Stemmy's at the end of the hall.
Don't
go in the room."

Heron nodded.

"And, Anthony, the little girl is in the room
next to Stemmy. We need her…it…the way it is."

Heron nodded again.

Naughton turned and left him.

Heron took a deep breath before he started
down that passageway. There were rooms on either side of him. He
could see through the glass into the enclosure. There was a bed and
a nightstand and a TV. There was an adjoining bathroom. A large
drawer was set below the viewing window. It was hermetically sealed
at both ends and could be used for transferring meals or what not.
That way people didn't have to put on biohazard suits all of the
time.

The empty rooms passed out of his vision on
either side as he marched. He stopped when he got to the little
girl's room. He didn't even know her name. Turning his head, he
looked inside. He didn't want to but he couldn't help himself. She
was curled up on the floor but seemed to sense him. Looking up, he
could see the hunger in her eyes. She was still unmarked, though
there was dried blood around her mouth. Stemmy's blood. They stared
at each other for a few moments, the living and the undead. She
didn't move but he could see the minute wriggling of her nose. She
was sniffing the air, looking for him. She knew he was there but
she couldn't smell him and it confused her.

At that moment, he could no longer think of
her as a little girl. He felt no pity for this poor child whose
abominable fate had been sealed by some unknown plague. This
creature had bitten and infected his good friend. What would happen
now?

Heron moved on.

Stemmy was in the bed, his injured leg
wrapped up and elevated, an IV tube leading from his left arm to a
bag on a stand. The bag was filled with a yellowish liquid. On the
other side was a monitor with wires that snaked down and
disappeared beneath his gown. Stemmy looked up, also sensing
Heron's presence. He looked okay.

"Anthony."

He sounded like crap.

"How're you feeling?" Heron asked before he
could stop himself.

With some effort, Stemmy raised himself to a
sitting position. He was still groggy from the anesthesia. "Yeah,
I'm okay. Leg hurts like hell."

Heron nodded, not knowing what to say.

"They've got someone next door. I heard
movement, scratching. Is it…
her
?"

Heron nodded again.

Stemmy shook his head. "I don't remember
much. The last thing I remember is shooting that woman in the head.
But I have flashes of the pictures all around the apartment and I
know the girl bit me."

Heron said nothing.

Stemmy got out of bed and hobbled forward. He
forgot the IV stand and had to go back for it when the tube tugged
on the needle in his arm. When the same thing happened with the
monitor he yanked it forward by the wires in frustration. He came
right up to the glass and pressed his face against it, craning to
see into the next room. But, of course, he had no view of the
zombie inside.

"That's what's going to happen to me, isn't
it?" he asked.

Heron said nothing.

Stemmy nodded to himself. Then he looked up
at Heron. There was a lot to say and he wanted to say it all. But
none of it came. "You don't let that happen, hear?"

Heron said nothing.

Stemmy nodded again, this time to his
partner.

They stood silently for a while. Finally,
Stemmy asked, "Did anyone call Eileen?"

"I don't think so."

"It's getting late. Have you got your phone
on you? They took mine."

Heron reached into his pocket and pulled out
the cell. Surprisingly, he had a decent signal. He guessed they'd
installed relays into the superstructure. Pulling out the drawer,
he dropped the phone inside and then pushed it through. Stemmy
retrieved it on his end and then started back for the bed.

"I'll give you some privacy," Heron said.

"Thanks."

Heron hesitated a moment. Then he turned and
went back out the way he'd come. This time he did not look at the
little girl.

***

EILEEN
sounded frantic when she
answered the phone despite the fact that it wasn't really that
late; he'd missed dinner. Stemmy had maneuvered himself back over
to the bed so he could rest comfortably while speaking with her. He
didn't want her to hear the pain. He didn't want her to hear the
fear.

"Eileen," he said.

"Oh, my God. It's you. When I saw Anthony's
number I didn't know what to think."

He winced. "Look," he said and could sense
her relief was washing away. "I'm not going to be able to come home
tonight." Before she could ask, he began to explain. "Anthony and I
tracked down the identity of that guy, the zombie guy. He had a
wife and a little girl and they were both…well…I was bitten."

"Bitten?" She seemed so confused. "Bitten by
what?"

"By the girl. The little girl bit me. She's a
zombie."

"Johan, you're not making any sense. What do
you mean she's a zombie. You mean she's sick?"

He breathed. "I mean she's dead and she bit
me and now I'm locked up in quarantine."

"Quarantine? Are you sick?"

He hesitated, not sure what to tell her. He
could feel his body fighting the infection. He could feel it
losing.

Eileen's breath became heavy and ragged then.
He started to say her name but she cut him off. "Aren't there
doctors? Can't they do something?"

"They're trying."

"Trying? That's it? Where are you,
Johan?"

"It's not important."

"It damned well is! I need to be with
you."

"Eileen!" he shouted, frustrated. "You can't
come here. You just…you just can't, okay?"

"What am I supposed to do, then? What do I do
now?"

"I'm sorry, Eileen. I'm so sorry."

"You're sorry? Tell that to your
four
daughters! You tell them you're sorry."

"Please…"

"How many times did I tell you to give up
that job? You could've retired years ago but you had to go on…"

"Eileen, don't do this!" he cried.

And then he
cried
.

And then she cried.

They spent long minutes crying together
before Eileen finally pulled it together and pulled him together.
"What else is there to say, then?"

He breathed. "Can we just talk like we always
did? Can you tell me about the bills or the kids or maybe we can
just reminisce a while?"

She started off tentatively, just mentioning
the high electric bill and how it was definitely Lucia's fault
because she was always on the computer. He agreed and promised to
have a talk with her but then caught himself up. They tried like
that for a while and then settled into the talking about the past.
Talking about the past was easy. They'd had such
good
times
together. It put him at ease to sort out the memories of his life
with Eileen. It made the hurt in his leg and his heart go away for
just awhile. So they talked and they laughed and they cried. And
every time there was a lull in the conversation, one of them was
quick to pick up the slack and make sure no one remembered why he'd
really called.

They did that until the battery in Anthony's
phone started to give off warnings. After that they said their
goodbyes together and hung up so that they could each weep in
private.

***

HERON
lingered outside the door to the
ward a moment, wondering whether to search out the captain or just
wait for Stemmy to finish. He thought about his partner's situation
and how he would act under the same circumstances. What would he
say to Alicia if he was in Stemmy's place? He couldn't even
fathom.

With these thoughts in his head, he chose to
look for the captain. Standing alone outside the ward would just
force him to dwell on it and that wouldn't do. Stemmy was going to
need him.

At first he walked back the way he had come.
Most of the laboratories were empty now. He passed a janitor and
asked him if he'd seen Captain Naughton but the janitor either
didn't know who the captain was or didn't speak English. As he
walked, he marveled at the complexity of the installation. It was
almost entirely self-contained and he was sure that it was
outfitted with a top of the line lock-down mechanism. He wondered
what it would be like to be trapped down there for an indefinite
period of time, trying in vain to unriddle a deadly plague. He
supposed it would be better than being trapped outside.

At long last, he found someone who could lead
him to the captain. The man was a lab technician, working late on
something. He was young, but looked old. He wore a grizzled beard
and sported a significant paunch. He didn’t know the captain but
was sure that any police officer, especially a high ranking police
officer, would be in the company of Dr. Luco.

The technician showed Heron to a series of
examination rooms and then left him after indicating one toward the
end of the corridor. As the detective made his way down the hall,
he could hear Naughton's distinct voice.

The examining room was small but it had been
set up as a makeshift lab as well. Naughton was sitting in a low
chair, his legs spread out in front of him. He held a phone to his
ear and was talking into it a little too loudly. Standing, looking
into a microscope, trying her best to ignore the captain, was a
fortyish woman in a white coat. She had her long brown hair tied
back into a pony tail and was scribbling into a pad with her left
hand. Heron noticed that she was writing in the pad without even
looking at it and yet doing so flawlessly.

Naughton waved as Heron walked in and then
flashed him the
one-minute
finger. Heron stood in the
doorway waiting. After a minute, Naughton was still talking but the
woman finally looked up and took notice of him.

"Are you detective Heron?"

He nodded.

She looked once at Naughton then beckoned him
outside.

"Denise Luco," she introduced, extending a
hand.

He nodded, accepting the hand but saying
nothing.

"I need to run a blood test on you," she
said. "We've tested everyone who was in that apartment and everyone
who's come into contact with Detective Stemmy. So far no one's
shown any signs of the infection, not even the surgical team, but
we're not taking any chances."

Heron was still in mild shock, still
absorbing the existence of zombies and the fact that one had bitten
his good friend and partner. He didn't immediately reply to Dr.
Luco. And she was not a particularly patient woman.

"Detective? Did you hear me?"

He sort of snapped out of it, found himself
irritated by her demeanor. "What's going to happen to Stemmy?" he
asked.

At this she balked. "Well…he was infected by
the bite. We've tried using a large dosage of IV antibiotics but
the infection seems resistant. At this point, it's really up to his
body's ability to fight off the infection."

She was saying that there was nothing they
could do.

"Will he end up like that
thing
that
bit him?"

Slowly, she nodded.

"How? How does that happen?"

Dr. Luco began to wring her hands. Heron
could tell that he was making her uncomfortable, which was
something he didn't normally do. His strength had always been
putting people at ease so that they would communicate. It was how
he had managed to win Alicia's affections. But now his emotions
were so erratic and their levels so high that there wasn't anything
he could say or do to put people at ease.

"We don't know all that much about it yet.
It's aggressive, breeding at several times the rate of natural
bacteria…"

"Wait, wait. You mean someone
made
this?"

She nodded. "It has all the telltale signs of
having been created in a lab."

Great!
"Bio terrorism?"

She shrugged. "That's your job,
detective."

"Can you help them, the zombies? Can you turn
them back?"

She shook her head again, this time sadly.
"The few tests we've been able to run on Zoe Koplowitz indicate
that she's dead. Even if we were able to purge the infection from
her body, it would just leave her…inanimate."

At that moment, Naughton stuck his head out
the door and apologized for being on the phone. Luco and Heron
moved into the room so the three of them could speak. Heron sat on
the examining table while Luco prepared a syringe and a tube for
his blood test.

"It's just a precaution, Anthony," Naughton
told him.

"Dr. Luco explained it to me," he
answered.

Naughton nodded solemnly. "Did she explain
the nature of the illness to you?"