The Dishonored Dead (16 page)
The zombie opened the book, began paging through it slowly. It was clear the book was very old and might fall apart if improperly handled.
“Here we are. I’m going to read something, and I want you to tell me if it means anything to you, if you have any reaction. Are you ready?” When Conrad didn’t respond, Gabriel read: “
Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy
.”
Gabriel looked up at him. “Anything?”
“What’s Muse?”
The zombie smiled and closed the book, though he did it in an almost delicate, careful way that for some reason reminded Conrad of how Denise had handled Kyle when he had just been brought into the world.
“If we’re being truthful here,” Gabriel said, “then let us just say it’s not worth getting into. But this story deals with the ancient Greeks. And yes, before you ask what the Greeks are, let us just ignore that too. The only reason I bring it up is that when the Government decided to rename all the cities of the world, they had no imagination to do it. So they turned to the texts left over from the living. Not only that, they had some living that they’d imprisoned and kept to help translate those texts, and so they turned to the only people who could understand them—us. So Olympus, Artemis, Troy … why are you shaking your head?”
“You’re saying that the greatest city on this planet, that Artemis University, that every major city in the world—were named by zombies?”
“As well as a number of buildings and streets.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I? Think about your movies, Conrad. Think about your television programs and video games. Who do you think helped create them? Who do you think are the ones that come up with new ideas? It all has to do with different forms of imagination. It’d be impossible for the Government to ban all imagination, so they pick and choose which to ban and which to let slide.”
“These are all lies. Everything you say to me, you’re using your … your …
imagination
to make them up.”
Conrad had inched forward to the edge of his chair. He was about to stand up but wasn’t sure what he would do once that happened, so he forced himself to stay seated. He glared back at the zombie through the bars. The zombie simply stared back at him.
“Relax, Conrad.”
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”
“You are here because you are required to be here. I know that; you know that. So yes, I did lie earlier when I said you weren’t forced to come here. Albert wants me to understand something about you. So that’s why you’re here now.”
Conrad sat back a little in his chair. “What does Albert want to know about me?”
Gabriel set the first book aside. He picked up the second, placed it to his nose again and inhaled. Then he opened the cover and said, “Let’s try another one. Now listen:
“
It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone
.”
Gabriel paused again. He looked up from the book and asked, “Anything?”
“What does Albert want to know about me?”
Gabriel closed the second book delicately, carefully. He set it aside. He opened the third book, and as he did he said, “Tell me one thing, Conrad, and maybe this will answer all our questions. These bars between us right now. Do you see them as locking me in? Or do you see them as locking you out?”
Conrad didn’t answer.
Gabriel held his stare for a moment. Then he adjusted his glasses on his face, paged through the book—this one was much thinner than the first two—until he found the page he wanted.
He opened his mouth to read but closed it. Shook his head slowly and said, “This is a waste of both of our times.” He shut the book and went to set it aside along with the two others, but paused. Slowly he looked up at Conrad.
“Would you like to touch it?”
Conrad stared at the thin book in the zombie’s hand.
“Go ahead. Take it.”
The zombie stood up and approached the bars. Conrad found himself doing the same. They reached the bars at the same time.
Gabriel extended the book through the bars. Conrad went to take the book—his hand inches away—when the zombie pulled it back.
“I’m sorry, that was wrong of me. I don’t mean to play games with you. But Albert wants me to ask you this particular question, he wants to get a sense of you, and if I don’t try to find that out … well, will you answer just one more question?”
Conrad only stared at the book—a sibling of those he’d destroyed before, something he’d thought no longer existed, and something he’d never once touched—now so very close.
“Conrad?”
He shifted his gaze to Gabriel, to the zombie’s living eyes.
“Why are you afraid?”
“What?”
Gabriel sighed. He extended the book again, held it there until Conrad decided it wasn’t some kind of trick and grabbed it.
Then he had it, he had the book, and he was turning away when Gabriel asked the second half of his question—“Why are you afraid to question everything?”—and before Conrad knew it his hands opened and there was a heavy moment of silence as the book dropped to the floor.
“Really, Dad, you
don’t have to.”
“But I want to.”
“Yeah, I know, and that’s great, but … I mean, I’m almost ten now, and …”
Standing in the kitchen doorway that Wednesday morning, his backpack already hanging off one shoulder, Kyle looked toward his mother for help. Denise didn’t turn from the sink where she was busy rinsing dishes.
“You’re right,” Conrad said, suddenly getting it. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Kyle started nodding his head, smiling now, but when he noticed his father’s expression, he said, “Hey, no, it’s not like that.”
“Sure.”
“No, really. I”—he looked down at his sneakers, looked back up—“I want you to walk me. It’ll be … fun.”
Conrad smiled. “Kyle, get your butt out of this house right now, or else I will walk you to your bus stop. And I’ll hug you and kiss you in front of all your friends too.”
This was enough for Kyle. He shouted goodbye to his mom, goodbye to his dad, then turned and hurried toward the front door.
Conrad glanced back at Denise, who had just finished rinsing the dishes and was now drying her hands. She gave him an amused look, shaking her head and smiling. He smiled back. Then he started down the hallway, following his son, realizing that yes, he had missed that time in his son’s existence where he could walk him to the bus, what a normal father would do. Now, being the father he had become, he just wanted to make sure his son had made it through the front door okay.
He was dressed except for his shoes, but he opened the front door and stepped outside anyway. Kyle was already halfway down the block, hurrying to catch the bus three blocks away. Conrad noticed a car parked a little ways down along Orchid Lane, a black sedan, and he wanted to raise his hand, nod, make some kind of acknowledgement to the men inside.
Instead he turned back and went inside, where he found Denise, her jacket draped over her arm.
“Get your shoes on,” she said, handing him his wallet and keys.
“Where are we going?”
“The doctor’s.”
The waiting room
was full but they didn’t have to wait long after signing in. The doctors and nurses knew who and what Conrad was—or at least what he had been—and so they were given the white carpet treatment. He was lead back to a room, asked to strip to his underwear, and then waited there on the paper-covered table for a few minutes before the doctor entered. He carried a clipboard and wore glasses.
“How have you been feeling, Conrad?”
Conrad, who had never once felt a thing in his life, said he was feeling fine.
“Have you been applying the lotion regularly?”
He said he had.
“Has there been any improvement?”
He hesitated.
The doctor set the clipboard aside. He rolled a stool out from under the table and sat on it. Taking out a penlight, he held it up to Conrad’s mouth. “Open wide.”
Conrad came out of the room ten minutes later. He could see the hopeful, expectant look in Denise’s eyes. He tried to force a smile but couldn’t.
“How bad?” she asked after they’d gotten into the elevator and the doors had slid shut.
“Not bad at all.”
“You’re lying. I can always tell when you’re lying to me.”
They went to the grocery store next, slowly walked the brightly lit aisles.
In the produce section they passed a young woman pushing a baby stroller. Denise gasped as she bent over the stroller. Conrad stayed where he was behind the cart, looking away in embarrassment.
“Oh what a cute little thing,” Denise said to the baby, its black eyes squinted up at her, its little decayed hands opening and closing. “What’s her name?”
“Abby,” the woman answered.
“Hello there, Abby. How are you?”
The dead baby cooed.
Denise smiled at Conrad, then at the woman. “What a precious baby you have.”
“Thank you.”
Turning back to the baby, Denise said, “Aren’t you just the most precious thing? Yes you are. Yes you are, Abby.”
After checking out, after loading the car, Denise turned to Conrad and embraced him. She held him for a long time. Her head to his chest, she told him that it was okay, that they were going to fight this.
Their next stop was the pet store—Pluto’s Pets Unlimited, the very same store to which Conrad had brought Kyle the other day.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Conrad asked.
“Don’t you think he’s mature enough to take care of a dog?”
“I guess …” Remembering Eugene Moss’s kitchen again, watching as Philip shot the gray retriever in the head.
“Okay then.” Denise opened her door. “Let’s go.”
They arrived home and unloaded the car just in time for the phone call. It was a nurse from Kyle’s school.
“There’s been an accident,” she said.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch!”
“Kyle, relax. It’ll be okay.”
“But it
hurts
.”
They were in the emergency room, almost every chair filled. Phones were ringing, a robotic voice was paging somebody every thirty seconds, and in the seat between Conrad and Denise their son was doing his best not to cry.
A good portion of the skin on Kyle’s left leg had been torn off, enough so that the dead muscles and bones beneath could easily be seen. Kyle’s face was screwed up. His eyes were squeezed shut. His teeth were gritted. He kept rocking in his seat, mumbling how much his leg hurt, how much it
hurt
.
Denise was the one talking him through the pain. Conrad, despite how much he wanted to, couldn’t force himself to say anything. He knew his son was feeling no true pain. And because of this, he couldn’t show the appropriate reaction to what had happened to his son—an accident, just like the nurse had said, Kyle playing a little too rough with his classmates at recess, and when he’d gotten knocked down his knee scraped the macadam and tore off all that dead skin.
It could have been worse, Conrad knew. It could have been a whole lot worse. A broken bone, mostly, because it was very difficult to find replacements, especially for a child Kyle’s age. That was one thing Conrad had found most interesting about the living: when they got hurt their bodies began healing themselves, even their bones could heal, unlike the dead, whose bodies did nothing more than continue to decay.
“Mommy,” Kyle said, reverting himself back to a much younger age as he lowered his head on her shoulder. “It hurts so bad.”
“I know, sweetie. I know.” She looked over Kyle’s head at Conrad, stared at him a moment, and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
She returned a minute later, and after another minute one of the nurses came with a wheelchair to take them back to one of the rooms.
“Hey, that ain’t fair,” said a woman sitting next to her husband. The husband had a white bandage around his head. “We been waiting here an hour now. An hour!”
Others started up the protests but the nurse just ignored them. Conrad stared at his wife in amazement, but she ignored him too, walking beside Kyle as he was pushed in the wheelchair.
Once they were taken to a room—much like one Conrad had been in earlier that day—the nurse said, “I’ll make sure a doctor sees you immediately.”
“Thank you,” Denise said.
The nurse smiled and was gone.
Conrad said, “You didn’t do what I think you did.”
“I didn’t have a choice. Kyle needs immediate attention.”
“But it goes against the Code—”
She shot him a glare. “Enough with the Code. Don’t you think our son is more important?”
Not one doctor came to see them, but three. They each wore long white coats, two of them held clipboards, and after taking a look at Kyle’s leg all three doctors stepped to the side, conferred for a minute, and came back.
“Your son will be okay,” said the doctor without a clipboard. “We’re going to perform an immediate skin transplant.”
It should have been left at that, it really should have, but before the doctors left to prep for the surgery, each and every one of them turned to Conrad. They extended their hands. They told him how much of an honor it was to meet him. They told him he was a hero.
The next morning
it was as if Kyle had never even had his accident. His leg was all stitched up with skin that had been donated by those families of men and women who had recently expired. His high spirits had returned. He got up early to play his video game, have breakfast with his parents, and then headed out for the bus. Conrad stood on the porch, watching his son walk down the block, and once again noticed the black sedan parked farther down the street. This time he nodded, once, and when he turned and stepped back into the house, he found Denise waiting for him just like before.
