The Zom Diary (13 page)

     “I guess that makes sense.  I guess I see why you guys are so happy to have a new face around.”

     “Hey, Kyle, it’s more than just an extra pair of hands, Bryce has a vision for this place, and we need more people to make it happen.  Good people.  And, not to sound like a creep, but we need to find some women too.”

     “Oh.”  So much for Armageddon, let’s start a utopia?  I am starting to wonder if it has been smart to get curious about this place.  Still, the odds of these folks recreating the mess that existed before the end are slim.  Maybe they will get it right, but…Silas is looking at me, and probably wondering if our talk is over.

     “Well, I don’t know where any spare women are, but I’d consider helping you folks out if it means I’ll be able to get supplies and maybe set up a room for when I’m around.  And beer.  Of course beer.”

     I jump then as Bryce’s voice calls from behind me, “Done.  You can pick any room you want as long as it’s free.  And, if you want to help, you can start right away.  We’re going out to look for survivors and to get supplies from that clinic.  Since you’ve got a working rig and the volunteer spirit, we could use you.”

     I turn and notice that the Prophet and his lady friend look displeased at the new arrival.  Bryce looks collected, and I notice that he has changed his clothes.  He takes a seat next to me, and doesn’t have to ask Silas for a glass.  It is down and poured before he gets seated.  This isn’t beer though, but a tumbler with brown liquor in it.  Silas grabs two more of the short glasses and pours four fingers of bourbon all around.  Larry must have been some guy.  Bryce slugs it back, as does Silas.  I take my time and the opportunity provided by the silence to voice my concerns.

    “I know these people are valuable to you, and the supplies, but if there was more to that swarm than what found its way to me, we’d be fucked.”

     Bryce taps the bar with his index finger and Silas pours another belt.  He sips this one, “You might be right, but if it was me, and I was out there holed up waiting for help, I’d want us to take the risk.  Right?  We’ll look for people first, supplies if we can.  Before he got bad, Larry said that place was stuffed with non-perishables and other gems.  He also made it clear that when he went down, the other four that were with him were okay, so we need to assume that they are alive and couldn’t make it back. Unless we find otherwise, that’s what I’m going to believe.  If they are dead, we deal with it, and maybe honor their memory by getting those supplies.  Are you with us?”

     I sip some bourbon and make a quick decision.  What the hell?

     “Yes.  I’m in.”

     “Good.”

     Bryce puts out his hand, and I shake it, wondering if I should be making these kinds of decisions in this state of mind.

Chapter 12

     I stumble out of the bar late, rifle slung on my shoulder, and bid Silas good night.  Bryce had left earlier, promising to meet me by the truck in the A.M.  He has some scrounged oil, and said he’d change the oil in the truck and give it a once over.  I’d handed him the keys and said thanks.  At some point, the Prophet and the girl departed, unnoticed.

     I exhale deeply, feeling like I am full of fumes and combustible vapors.  I walk up the street, enter the old apartment building, and find that the lights work.  The room I used before is still unoccupied, and the bed hasn’t been made since my last visit.  I decide then to choose this place as my apartment in town.  I’ll get the key from Bryce in the morning, as promised.

     I set my stuff by the door and flip off the light switch.  The windows glow dimly from the few working street lights below, providing light.  I’ve marveled at the use of electricity for this, but Bryce has made convincing remarks about the safety advantages of even a little light.  He’s also said a lot about the dangers of direct current and needing to keep a load on the system they have running, and plus it is cheerful.

     I open the window and pull the chair back over to the sill, allowing me a perch from which to sit and watch the street below.  Before I sit, I walk into the bathroom and take a long drink of lukewarm water.  It tastes a little of rust and old building.  I fasten the chain next to the door and take a seat, basking in the sick yellow sodium glow of the street below.

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          The next morning finds me reclined in the seat; arms crossed, face kissed by a cool morning breeze.  The scent reminds me of open clean spaces, ozone and rain.  As the breeze from the open window before me stirs my hair and wakes me, I focus on my most immediate desires:  bathroom, water, and a good stretch.  I must have fallen asleep at some point.  I can’t remember.

     After a few minutes in the bathroom, which includes a camel defying drink at the sink and a sobering look at my bleary red eyes, I check my gear and get ready.

     The AR-15 is where I left it propped by the door.  Had I known I would be going out on a mission like this, I would have brought the AK.  The AR-15 is top notch, a good long range rifle, especially with the sight, but because of these things and its near pristine condition, I am reluctant to take it out where it might get tossed around, dirty, and used for smashing stuff.  It just never fails, the protection paradox, the more you try to keep things nice...  The Glock is good, especially indoors, and I have my rummage tools.  Fine.

     I sling my rifle and make my way down the long stairs.  I remember to shut the window, but I leave the rest of the place as it is.  Opening the door to the street, I watch a plastic bag blow by, pushed by the wind.  My eyes follow it up the street to where my truck is parked and I make my way over to it.

     Bryce is pouring oil into the engine from an old one liter soda bottle.  It is amber and clean looking.  He looks up when I walk to the other side of the open hood.

     “Do you know how disgusting the oil in this thing was?”

     I nod, “I don’t really take it out much, you know, a lot of my favorite places went out of business recently, and it’s hard to get a good mechanic these days.”

     Bryce stops pouring and smiles, “That’s never been easy.”  He pauses, looking over his shoulder at the library.  “I’d like to show you something before we leave.  There aren’t many people here that I would want to see this, yet, and I want someone else thinking about it.”

     “What is it?”

      I look over at him, and he gestures to the library, “It is best if you come and see.”

     He lets the hood slam shut after replacing the oil cap, and I follow him as he drops an oily rag on the piled tools and walks toward the steps of the library.  We don’t speak.  I wonder what the hell he is going to show me.

     We walk past the checkout desk and beneath the great glass atrium of the reading room; a marvel for a small town library.  The windmill above cuts swaths through the streaming sunlight and casts nervous shadows about the room.  Neat rows of tables of polished white oak gleam everywhere.  We pass the stacks and come to the stairwell that leads to the basement and what had been the children’s reading room, if I remember correctly. 

     Bryce flips a switch and soft florescent light sputters and illuminates the grey rubbery stairs.  Many of the ballasts have but one bulb.  Others flicker.  Our steps click and echo in the stairwell, and we pass through a fire door into a wondrous laboratory.

     Here the light shines brightly from reading lamps and small rectangular shafts in the ceiling.  Peering up through one, I can see it leads up through the ground and its glass is covered by a grate.  The contents of the old room has mostly been removed.  In place of small bookshelves and bright couches, narrow workbenches, a portable kiln, and assemblies of tubes and Pyrex jars stand guard at all sides.  The far corner houses a large metal desk where a laptop and stacks of books compete for space.  Every surface is covered with instruments and objects, save the central table, covered by a sheet of clear plastic which lays beneath two objects.

     One is a Tupperware tray in which the remains of a putrefied head, the one from the road, lays like some gruesome disassembled puzzle.  The second object is a fish tank, lid duct-taped tight, with a hose feeding down to an air pump that hums softly.  The contents of the tank are equally unappealing.      

     There, floating dead center in the clear fluid of the tank is a perfect black and shining brain.  It is large enough to be human, and it sets the gears and cogs in my own head-mess a tumbling.  It is beautiful.  An obsidian curiosity, so still save for the play of light on its surface and a bare pulsation.

     “What the hell?”  I mouth softly.

     “This is our friend from before, the one you supplied me from the road.  This is what I wanted you to see.”  I jump slightly as he speaks, not realizing that he has moved beside me.

     “I see it.  What is it?”

     “I removed the contents of the zombie’s skull in sterile conditions and examined it first in the tank, and also from prepared samples under the microscope.  Not the first time I’ve done that, but it is the first time I’ve noticed this particular effect.”  He points at the tank.  “Do you know much about sea sponges?”

     I shake my head.

     “They are actually a lot like colonies of thousands of microorganisms.  You can take a sea sponge, put it in a blender, and pour the remains back into a tank; they will re-form into their original shape.  I’ve put this thing through similar stressors, and each time it re-forms into the semblance of a human brain.”

      “So what, the zoms are sea sponges?”

     “No, I’m saying that the material in their heads behaves in a way like sea sponges.  Whatever causes reanimation, it isn’t a virus or bacteria.  It’s something like a colony of microorganisms.”

     “Ok.  I think I understand, but I’m not a scientist.  What do you want me to do?”

     “When the brain is in the blender, as ‘goo’, I can’t sense it.  Here in the tank, as it is, I can.  It has a presence.”

     “Oh.”

     I’m not sure what to make of all this, but I know that now is the time to ask about the shit on the basement ceiling.  I tell him about the ceiling; how it was like a puddle of mercury, how it burned, and when I tell him about the zombie and the barn, he looks spooked.

     “It was calling to them.”

     One of the lights from above flickers in its ballast.  The bulb made a ‘snic, snic, snic’ noise and flutters back on.  Bryce stands then, hands palm down on the table, leaning in, looking at the thing that floats in the tank, and mutters to himself softly, but not so low that I can’t make out the words.

     “What are you?”

     The way he looks at the tank and the tone of his voice; it is as if he expects an answer.  Knowing what I do about his supposed extra sensitivity to the things, I wonder if he doesn’t expect a reply.

     “Bryce?  What do you make of all this?  I mean, what’s the link?  It’s obvious to me that the ability you have came after you were bitten.  Is that stuff in you?”

     He doesn’t reply.   I stand there feeling uncomfortable at the prospect of just walking away, especially with the whole day ahead of us and our plans to head out together, but I can’t think of a polite way to break this reverie.  After a moment more, he stands straight and runs his hand through his hair, nodding to himself.

     “There is one possibility, but even if it’s related, it doesn’t explain everything.”

     I am getting tired of the dramatics and obfuscation.  I glare at him and do my best ‘get on with it already’.  He motions me to follow him to the desk.  Sitting, he clicks on a file and turns the laptop so I can see what he is looking at.

     “One of my colleagues was working on a team whose purpose was to engineer microorganisms that could convert organic material into a petroleum byproduct.  The idea was that these organisms could be introduced into landfills, or even cultured in a tank and then fed organics, producing a useful product that would be identical to the oil that is pumped from the earth –usable for, plastics, and fertilizers, maybe even large enough quantities to refine into heating oil or fuel.  They were very excited about the process.

     “Most of the scientific community had already agreed that we were on the back end of ‘peak oil’ and realized that this would mean the loss of many industries and needful products.  Did you know that over ninety percent of our food production relied on petroleum in one form or another?  It would have been a miracle; no more wars over oil, a cleaner planet, all for the cost of nothing—and, it would decrease the amount of biomass in landfills…Sorry, I’m getting off topic.”

     “No, I get it; turn garbage into oil.  Go on.  What happened?”

     “I don’t know.  I was following their research online as a curiosity.  I wasn’t involved in the project in any official capacity.  The first cases of the zombie plague, back at the start, were traced back to Massachusetts.  Their lab was in Cambridge.  I really didn’t put the two things together until I started to go back and read this old stuff and observe the fellow in the tank.”

     “I thought that scientists were more tight lipped about their research.  How did you get to see all this?  It’s pretty in depth.”

     Bryce’s eyes fall and he takes a moment before lifting a small picture frame off the desk and handing it to me.  The photo is of a very tidy looking woman holding a smiling child, a boy with golden locks.

     “She was my ex-wife and lead scientist on the project.  They lived back east in Boston.  We were still friends.  I tell myself that there has to be a chance.  I was bitten after all, and I escaped from a major urban area.  Anything is possible.”

     I hand back the picture and tell him I am sorry.  Together, we remain in the lab for a few minutes before he begins to prepare things for his coming absence.  For my part, I just stand there.  With nothing to say, I excuse myself and go to grab a smoke.

     Walking back up the stairs and through the reading room, I think about what I’ve learned.  It is possible that this research had somehow caused the creation of the zombies.  It made sense that Bryce wouldn’t want people to know of his involvement in it.  With his knowledge of my transgressions, he probably felt safe telling me.  What has this knowledge done to him?  I think back to the tank and the brain.  It makes sense somehow;   these colonies of organisms reanimating the dead and wanting to reproduce—to spread.  What I have more trouble with, is how this psychic link came about, or why some people who were bitten didn’t die from the infection.  And why did the zoms keep coming out my way?  Bryce hasn’t had an answer for that.

     Pushing my way through the heavy wood and glass doors of the library’s main entrance, I sit on the cement steps and unzip my belt pouch.  Selecting a medium sized joint, I light it, inhale, and stare out at the street.  It is a lovely day.  The sky is an incredible blue, almost sapphire, with tiny puffs of clouds hanging becalmed, as if painted there by some great Hand.

     The only sounds are the slow creaking of windmills and the song of birds.  Many small birds.  Darting between the buildings that lined Main Street.  Chirping.

     I am enjoying having something to do other than eating fruit and cleaning guns all day.  Still, the more I leave my seclusion the more tied to these people I become.  Why is this all being thrust on me?  I guess it is my own damn fault for crawling out from underneath my little rock and going looking for trouble.  I would have been perfectly happy to let the dead rest and go about my stupid life.  But the dead don’t rest anymore.  Do they?

     Bryce comes out after a few minutes, pack in hand holding his own AR-15.  I chalk the joint and stick the end in the pack, already feeling a nice high, and follow him to the truck.  I take the driver’s seat after we stack our rifles in the back.  Bryce observes that it is best to carry the same kind of rifle if possible.  Pool our ammo.

     Apparently, the gas situation in town is no better than on the farm.  They had used trucks and vans at first to go on scavenge runs, but as the supply dwindled and new sources of fuel got further from town, it became impractical.  Still, there is a small emergency supply, and this counts as an emergency.  Bryce has supplied about fifteen gallons which rests in big red cans in the bed of the truck.  With the tank topped off, and a fill up in reserve… twenty or thirty miles out, same back –it should be more than plenty.