Dead Man Running (48 page)

Gregory:  That's red meat to the liberals, Mr. Secretary.

Wiley:  It shouldn't be.  Liberalism in its purest form has failed.  So has conservatism, frankly.  I realize now that there is a third path: helping our fellow citizens help themselves with a smaller, more efficient government focused on the things that prevent people from fulfilling their true potential.

Gregory:  I saw Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid at the Rose
G
arden ceremony.  Do you think they buy into those words?

Wiley: 
It doesn't matter. 
We're broke, David.  There is no more money – we have to find a different way to care for our fellow man while caring for the long term survival of the government, and our nation.

Gregory: (Laughs) I think the president did a lot of arm twisting to get the liberals on board.

Wiley: (Laughs) Perhaps a little.

Gregory: You mentioned your time in Congress.  How did this transition take place, from liberal firebrand to budget hawk?

Wiley: My transformation, as you call it, took place over time.  Every time I looked into a hungry child's eyes, I knew that I was a failure and that I had to find the truer path.

Gregory: The rumor was that you were about to be nominated as the Tea Party candidate for president?

Wiley:  I can't speak to any rumors.  What the Tea Party wants is good government and I've made that my life's mission.  I want nothing less than to transform the American government and its citizens.  There is a lot of overlap with Tea Party philosophy.

Gregory:  You said 'transform American
citizens
'.  What do you mean by that?

Wiley:  I want to make the American people free
: free from an overbearing, overreaching government that regulates every facet of their lives.  To transform them into creatures of freedom and justice.  All equal and empowered to fulfill their destinies.

Gregory:  Pretty powerful stuff, Mr. Secretary.  Can you do that?  In four years as VP and
perhaps eight more as president?

Wiley: (Smiles) There is no limit to what a strong and moral man can do.  Ultimately,
with
the help of the American people and the Almighty, there is nothing we can
't
do.

The school bell rang, signally that the buses would leave in five minutes.  Alisette grabbed the printouts and stuffed the pages into her bag.  She would read the rest at home.

As she walked outside to her bus she considered
the central question of
her assignment. 
Why was Wiley the best choice?

Her pastor – Pastor Beeman from Calvary Baptist – flashed in her mind as she pondered her answer.

Because Ben Wiley is God, was her answer.  He was nothing short of Jesus or, better yet, Moses.  He was leading
America
out of the wilderness of waste, on to the promised land of fiscal sanity and individual freedom.

In one week she would hold her graded paper: she received an 'A +'.  Her teacher felt that 'Alisette had captured brilliantly the cynicism and manipulative nature of Wiley, qualities which, in the cesspool of modern politics, make him the ideal candidate'.

She stuffed the paper in her desk and barely paid attention to
the ultra liberal
Mr.
Walton
.  She dreamed that one day she would meet Ben Wiley.  In her
conservative
Christian heart she knew that they were soul mates and she anticipated the day
when
she could tell him so.

TWENTY-
EIGHT

WEST PHILADELPHIA
– JULY 2012

Asparagus.  That was what was on
Mira
Hidar
's mind as she shopped in a small west Philly grocery near the Penn campus.  She wanted roasted asparagus spears to go with the braised lemon chicken breasts she planned to prepare for her dinner.

In the produce section she examined the asparagus.  The vegetables were all fresh so it was not difficult to
select
a decent bunch.  She flipped the asparagus into a small plastic bag and tied off the top with a twist tie.  She was ready to leave the store, her after work shopping complete. 

She was ready to go
'
home
'
to her empty apartment.  She had no friends in Philly and her family knew to stay away.  She had forbidden even phone calls.  She wanted no mo
r
e
Hidar
's hit
ting
Ben Wiley's radar.

More hurtfully, she had not heard from Elias Turnbull in nearly a month.  She missed him but her conscious mind still worked hard to convince the inner
Mira
that she missed him as a partner in this effort to stop Wiley.  She knew he was alive – he made the papers
often
in his role as
c
ongressman.  He had just chosen – for some reason – to have nothing to do with her.

Mira
looked up from her cart as she simultaneously pushed it forward.
After a few steps she stopped the cart
.  A
strange figure
had
emerged from an aisle to block her path
.

He was tall, very thin, with blond hair and pale blue eyes devoid of humor.
  He was dressed in a suit and tie but carried a basket with few items – bread, peanut butter, and Newman's Own salad dressing.  By all appearances a bachelor on his way home to a lonely meal.

What distinguished the man, and set alarm bells ringing in
Mira
's head, was the man's skin.  It was very pale, and splotchy in spots.  He graced
Mira
with a smile and she could see his darkened gums and
ill fitted false
teeth.

Her heart beat like a hammer and she
plotted the best escape route. 
She was ten feet away from the creature – surely she could recognize a zombie – when it spoke.

"My name is Manchester Lee, Ms.
Hidar
.  I think we need to
talk
."

Of course she recognized the name.  She slowly pushed the cart back to where he stood.

He smiled again.  "Not here," it said.  "Go to
Clark
Park
at seven and we'll talk."  The monster walked away. 
Mira
kept her eye
s
on him as he made his way out
of
the store.

Before crossing the threshold out of the store 'he' sat the hand cart next to the doorway, acknowledging that it would not be eating those goods – what he truly ate could not be purchased in a market like this.

Mira
knew where
Clark
Park
was – it was not far from her
apartment
. 
She would come prepared – she would not become part of this zombie's menu.

Mira Hidar found a bench far from the rowdy basketball courts at
Clark
Park
.  She was near the slides and monkey bars but only one child enjoyed the battered equipment.  Opposite Mira the child's behemoth mother held a phone to her ear and an expression of disgust on her massive face.  The phone appeared as a toy in her large dark hands, the communication device waving around the woman's ear as its owner comically bobbed her head while relating a wildly animated description of the shortcomings of "that motherfucking Kenny".

The reanimated critter who had introduced himself as Manchester Lee shambled down the pathway toward Mira.  Mother did not notice but
her
son did.  He somehow froze halfway down the plastic sliding board and eyed the untidy former human being. 
Manchester
grinned in as non-threatening a manner as a zombie is capable and the boy child waved and smiled back.  He completed his slide, pounded his small feet into the soil sand mixture and ran screeching to the monkey bars.

Manchester Lee took a seat next to Mira.  The grin that he had presented to the boy faded.  He looked tired, defeated.  There was no preamble.

"Elias has been turned," he said.

Mira felt gut punched although she knew it was coming.  She had felt it, felt the lost of him, a presence drifting out to sea never to be heard from again.  She felt love for him, now that it was safe to love such as him, a
fter
he was gone.

"Tell me your story," she replied.  He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other with significant effort, and spoke.

"Wiley had no interest in converting me to an undead.  I was more valuable as a warning to my confederates in
New Orleans
and elsewhere. 
M
y friend Elias was assigned to escort my body to the Big Easy and dump it in the most conspicuous possible location.
  He murdered me himself.
"

"But your friends brought you back?"

Lee nodded.  "The Hidar's aren't the only ones capable of creating a high functioning zombie," he replied.

"Someone did an excellent job."  She smiled.  It was really a crap job but she wanted to encourage the poor soul.  "What is the status of the resistance?"

"In disarray.  Many members have been killed, eaten, converted or gone into hiding.  I would say that the bulk of the resistance is seated on this filthy park bench."

Mira smiled.  The sadness about Elias left her, replaced by resolve.  She straightened her back and moved closer to the zombie.  "I'm travelling to the south Pacific next week to field test Wiley's so called atomic zombie bomb."

"Can you scuttle the test?"

"I don't want to," she replied.

He looked her over.  "Are you sure
you
haven't been converted?"  With effort he arranged his face into a smile.

"I want things to proceed.  I have developed a bomb of my own, one that can reverse the zombie process, make them human again.  When the time is right, when Wiley goes to deploy his zombie bomb, we replace his bombs with my own.  We change the mission of his bombs so that instead of converting new zombies they cure the existing ones."

"You've tested your bomb?  It works?"

"Yes and it does."

"How do you plan to substitute your bombs for his?"

"By selectively and quietly making key Wiley personnel human again.  I will begin with Elias, once he finds me."

"You think he's coming for you?"

"I know he will be.  He knows what I've been doing.  I'm sure he's told Wiley and Wiley probably told him to kill me once the zombie 'A' bomb proves operational."

Lee nodded and they sat on the bench watching the gargantuan woman and her child.

"You know we must kill your grandfather?"

Mira looked into the creature's eyes.  "I've known that.  It is the only sure way to stop Wiley, given the humanizing spells already applied to him.  I'll handle that."

"And Mrs. Wiley – her baby cannot be born."

"Th
at
task I'll leave to you."  She stood.

"Good luck with the trial
and Elias
," Lee said.

She brushed her pants, looked at Lee.  "I will kill
one hundred and seventy
thousand islanders with Wiley's bomb.  The luck I'll need later when I try to bring them back," she said and she walked away.

"At least they have hope of being brought back," mumbled Manchester Lee as he sat on the bench.  He stayed there enjoying the boy's energetic playfulness.  He watched for several minutes until finally he felt the tug of his responsibilities.  He stood awkwardly, made no attempt to brush the dirt off his clothes and marched off to plan two murders.

Zombie Elias Turnbull met his leader outside the teeming livestock pen.  They were on the rolling green hills of an upstate
New York
dairy farm.  The
'
stock
'
consisted not of cows, but of humans.  Their shouts and cries were deafening, their stench more so.   They pressed
naked bodies
against the barbwire topped fence.  Some recognized him and shouted his name.  Cynically, he offered a campaign wave and
a
plastic smile.

Elias took a deep breath as he extended his hand to greet his boss.  How he loved the smell of livestock in the early morning.  His stomach growled,
its
anticipation of a meal rising.

"I wanted to speak to you before the board meeting, Elias," Wiley said over the din.  He had to shout to be heard.

Wiley and his fifty
worldwide
leaders had come to this dairy farm to plot the end of human domination of planet Earth.  On the agenda today was a meeting of the zombie board, regional leaders from each of the six zones.