Zombies! Episode 1 - Shawn of the Dead (4 page)

A shadow appeared. From that shadow reached
an arm. The hand gripped the corner of the wall inches from the
light switch. The fingers were a woman's fingers but cold and
grey.

"Mrs. Koplowitz?" Anthony stammered.

Stemmy gave him a look.

As she came into the light, such as it was,
they could see that there was no Mrs. Koplowitz in that body. She
swayed and stumbled a bit, the eyes glassy. Her face was drawn, the
skin hanging off of the skull like a shirt that almost but doesn't
quite fit. She didn't seem to see the two detectives and yet had
clearly come out in response to their presence. One leg was turned
at an odd angle but not broken. It looked as if she didn't quite
know how to use it. Aside from the rigor, there wasn't a mark on
her. There were no wounds and no blood. Unless zombies had somehow
learned to wash up she hadn't eaten anyone. And it didn't seem as
if Larry had been responsible for her death.

There was a strangled curse from the super
behind them but both detectives were too preoccupied with the thing
in front of them to look.

"Shoot it," Anthony whispered despite the
fact that he had his gun out and aimed.

"I can't just
shoot
her," Stemmy
whispered back. "Maybe they can help her."

At that, Mrs. Koplove seemed to finally
notice the detectives, Stemmy in particular. Her head shot up and
she lunged. She was clumsy and weak but she was only a few feet
from him. Both policemen fired at once. Anthony's shot took her in
the shoulder. Stemmy's hit her full in the chest. She lurched
backward trying in vain to make good use of her legs. Only the
wall, so close to her, kept her from falling to the floor. With her
dead hands, she gripped it, the paint scraping clean under her
fingernails. It took all three of them a moment to recover, the
officers only a bit quicker than the zombie. The shot to the
shoulder seemed to have no effect at all. She could still use the
arm. From the chest wound oozed an odorous blackened substance. It
didn't look like blood and it didn't smell like blood. It had the
consistency of old motor oil, the kind you should have changed a
year before.

Stemmy uttered a curse and shot her in the
head.

This time she dropped and did not rise.

Only now did Anthony turn to look back at the
super. He was still standing where they had left him, the look of
terror on his face indescribable. He didn't move and didn't utter a
sound. The leg of his pants was wet.

When he turned back, holstering his weapon at
the same time, Stemmy was prodding the body with a broomstick.

"Be careful!" Anthony hissed.

"'I don't believe it," Stemmy was muttering.
"I just don't…"

Stemmy's statement was cut off by his
strangled cry as something tugged on the leg of his pants and then
bit clean through. He dropped the broomstick as he turned. At his
feet, crouched like a panther and gnawing on his calf was a little
girl. She may have been eight years old with little blond curls. He
knew then that he had missed it. He had seen it and he had missed
it. There were pictures all over the apartment. Pictures of Larry
and his wife and their daughter.

Anthony came up quickly and kicked the little
girl in the head. He didn't even think twice about kicking this
child. She literally flew away from Stemmy and collided with the
wall. In an instant, Anthony had the broom in his hand and was
roughly pushing her back into the hallway. As he followed her, his
eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was a bathroom coming up on
the left. Quickly switching his grip, he took her full in the
middle with the broom itself and swept her deep into the room. She
fell and he used the opportunity to grab the door handle and pull
it shut. He was already on the phone as he went back to his
partner.

Stemmy had made it to the couch. He'd grabbed
up a pillow and was using it to staunch the blood flow. All that he
could think about was that infection and Shawn Rudd saying
She
was bit. 'S only a matter of time after that.
The leg ached but
it wasn't the fiery pain that he expected. He thought he might be
going into shock. He saw Anthony with the phone but couldn't hear
what he was saying over the rush of blood in his ears. Oddly
enough, his powers of observation, those powers that had failed him
moments ago, returned in spades. The super was gone, only a small
puddle left in his wake. There was another person there, an elderly
woman just poking her head in, covering her mouth as she saw what
she saw. Anthony screamed at her and his screams were like those in
a pool of deep water. But all of that was outside this world.
Inside this world was the life of Larry Koplowitz and his family.
There was his wedding picture; they looked so happy. Then there was
one of he and Mrs. Koplowitz. Her belly was huge, the little girl
inside almost ready to come out. Larry looked happy in that picture
but the missus looked like she was just ready to give birth
already. He remembered Eileen when she'd been that big. It was
something the first time. But by the fourth time she didn't even
put up the pretense of civility. That was when Stemmy had known she
was having their last child. And he'd so wanted a son. But instead
he'd had four daughters, four wonderful pearls of nature.

I'm never going to see them again.

He felt the pillow being ripped away and
looked up to see Anthony with a frosted plastic bottle. All at
once, his partner was pouring the contents of that bottle over his
exposed muscle…

…and he screamed!

Somewhere in the corner of his mind, he heard
himself mutter, "Does alcohol cure a zombie bite?"

Time must have passed because there were more
cops now. They were in uniform and Anthony was giving them orders.
To tell the truth, he wasn't just giving them orders. He was
shouting at them. He took one small rookie and shoved her hard in
the direction he wanted her to go.

Paramedics came in and began to dress the
wound. They wore latex gloves as they worked which was an important
thing. Maybe the bite wasn't the only way the zombie disease was
spread. After all, poor Mrs. Koplowitz hadn't had a mark on her.
The paramedics gave him a shot and he knew he'd been sedated.
Normally he would have protested but he wasn't given the choice and
he was too tired from the screaming to really care. As the
blackness swept in, Stemmy was grateful. The sedation would save
him from the tears that were finally starting to form in the wells
of his eyes.

***

SHAWN'S
arraignment hadn't gone well.
The public defender had seemed competent but inexperienced. The
assistant DA had torn him a new one and the result was that Shawn
was held without bail.

At least they gave him his own cell.

When an officer came to escort him out, he
was curious. All the officer would say was that he had a visitor.
Now Shawn didn't know anything about prison but he was pretty sure
they would have told him if it was visiting hours. Cuffing his
hands, they led back out the way he came in, then down a long
corridor into a part of the building he hadn't seen. There were
small rooms here, interrogation rooms. He had a momentary bout of
panic as the officer showed him into a bare grey room with a one
way glass window. There was a table with a chair at either end.
Shawn was ushered to far side of the table and told to sit.

He didn't recognize the detective who came to
see him right away. After all, he'd had limited exposure to the two
cops who'd questioned him when he'd killed those two zombies. And
this guy did not look the way he had on that day. The first thing
that Shawn noticed was that his confidence was shot. This detective
had been tall and strong. He was good looking, too, with thick arms
and powerful legs. Out of the two of them, he was the good cop. He
was the one who spoke because the other would probably just piss
you off. But now his posture was slumped and his eyes were sunken.
There was a brown spot on his white shirt that could have been
chili sauce. But it could have also been blood. The jacket of his
suit was missing. His tie knot was down.

Why would he come to see me?
Shawn
wondered until, just a split second later, it came to him.

"Do you remember me?" the detective asked as
he took a seat at the plain table between them.

Shawn nodded. "Didn't catch the name,
though."

"Heron."

"Right. Where's the other one, the white
guy?"

"Surgery."

"Tough break."

"How did you know?"

Shawn's brow came down over his eyes. "Know
what?"

"There are no such things as zombies!"

Shawn shrugged. "There are now." But he
thought about the question. He hadn't even questioned it when he'd
seen the zombie heading down the street. Maybe it had something to
do with his age. Kids are always expecting something they see in
the movies to become real. Adults are too colored by their
experience. They're less likely to believe what's right in front of
their eyes if it doesn't fit into the picture of the world they've
grown accustomed to.

"And the woman? Why did you kill the
woman?"

Shawn threw his hands in the air. "I told
you, man. She was bit. There wasn't…"

Silence fell over the room as the two looked
at each other. Detective Heron's face never changed but Shawn felt
himself lose a shade of color. What he felt in his gut now stomped
on his earlier panic at being led to an interrogation room.

"You seen more? Are you bit?"

The cop lowered his eyes. "My partner."

Shawn breathed a little easier. "Tough break,
man."

The cop looked back up. There was fire in his
eyes now. "This isn't some god damned movie! And it certainly isn't
the end of the world. He's in a hospital right now, in surgery.
There are doctors who can help him. And if you'd had a brain in
your head, you would have realized that and left that woman
alone."

Shawn didn't have anything to say. It was a
thought that had occurred to him over and over again in the past
twenty four hours. Clearly the zombie apocalypse had not come.
Outside the walls of this prison there were people doing their jobs
and going to school and meeting for lunch. He thought about Marcus
often, a hot fire in his gut.

The detective seemed finished with him then,
his point made. He stood up and knocked on the door. When the
officer opened it for him to leave he turned back to Shawn and
said, "When they ask you why you killed that woman you say you were
scared."

Shawn pursed his lips and blew. "I ain't
scared of nothin'."

"You say it, Shawn," the detective told him.
"You tell them you were scared of the end of the world."

***

IT
was getting close to dinner time
when Heron got back to the Manhattan hospital where Stemmy had
undergone surgery. He was out and had been moved to recovery in an
isolation ward. They wouldn't tell him where so, despite three
cigarettes on the way over, he started to throw a tantrum. It
wasn't a childlike kicking and screaming tantrum, though. It was
more of an adult shouting and threatening tantrum. When the people
at reception had had enough of him, they made a phone call and
asked him to wait.

He gave them exactly two minutes.

Captain Lance Naughton appeared from one of
the many exiting hallways and walked right up to Heron. Naughton
wasn't the kind of guy that just appeared places. If he was there,
the situation was serious. He had his hands up in the air before
Heron could say anything and beckoned him away from the room full
of people staring at him.

"I hear you went to see Shawn Rudd," Naughton
said as they passed radiology.

Heron shivered.

"Yeah," the detective said.

"Did he say anything useful?"

Heron shook his head.

"Listen to me, Anthony. Stemmy's still a
little groggy but he's awake. We've got him quarantined because the
doctors found a rampant bacterial infection on the wound. It seems
to be spreading."

Heron went cold inside. All he could think
about was the face on that little girl. Eight years old with cute
blond curls and a death mask of a face, all grey skin and bugged
out eyes. Was that what was going to happen to Stemmy?

Naughton turned them into a short passageway
that ended in a metal door with a keypad and a buzzer. The captain
hit the buzzer and waited for the door locks to click. He then
pushed his way through and Heron followed.

Behind the door was a staircase that led down
into the basement of the hospital. The lighting was good for a
stairwell. Heron wasn't sure but he felt like they went down at
least three flights. At the end was another door with another
keypad/buzzer set up. Naughton repeated the process and led the
detective into the isolation area. It was darker in here than
outside. The labs were well lit but the passages were dim. Inside
the rooms he could see various people at work. Most of them gave
the two police officers barely a glance as they passed through.
Eventually they reached yet another door. This time it opened with
just a push of Naughton's hand. In here were the patient rooms.
Though there were large windows through which one could see in, the
rooms were sealed tight. Naughton stopped.