What We Left Behind (21 page)

“How do we get rid of Fred and Wilma?” I ask Steve. Before he can reply, a shot rings out and Fred loses his head. Bits of blood and brains splatter across my back and shoulder. I can see the sniper reloading on the hillside a couple of hundred yards ahead. Steve waves his flag and I move slightly behind him, trying to make sure they associate us as being together. I doubt anyone’s had Zee come to surrender bearing gifts before.

“Please don’t kill us,” I say as the skullcap on top of Wilma’s head explodes in response to another shot. She crumples to the ground.

Steve says, “Be sure to smile for the soldiers looking at you through their telescopic sights.”

Smiling zombies, what will they think of next? I take him seriously and smile, suddenly realizing that he’s kidding. Well, he’s not kidding about them watching us, but they probably think I’m mad with a big grin on my bloodstained face.

With twenty yards to go, the hill gets quite steep. Bodies litter the road.

“Hazel,” a voice calls out and I see Jane. My heart races.

“Steve!” David yells, rushing past a couple of marauders who are clearly not pleased to see him run beyond their protective cordon.

David comes to a halt ten feet away from us. The look on his face is one of horror as he realizes how badly injured we are.

“It’s okay,” I say. “We found them. The tablets. They work.”

Jane comes up behind David.

“You were bitten?” she asks.

“We were bitten,” Steve replies. “And we’re both still alive!”

Marge is there. I can see her standing beside the wagon talking to one of the marauders. She’s pointing down the hill, but she’s not pointing at us. She’s gesturing toward the intersection.

David takes the two boxes from me. Jane takes Steve’s box. I turn and look at the bloody carnage behind us. There are hundreds of zombies down there in the intersection, but they’re feeding on their fallen comrades.

Marge comes up to Steve and me as we approach the wagon. The marauders give us a wide berth. They can see we’re okay, but our wounds are pretty obvious.

“Henry, Joseph,” Marge says. “We need to treat these kids.”

“The tablets,” I say. “They work.”

“Apparently they do,” she says in her typically understated manner. “For now, though, we need to get you kids out of harm’s way.”

The marauders are already packing up. David climbs on the back of the wagon and helps me up. Steve and I slump on the wooden deck as Henry and Joseph tend to our bites.

“I can’t believe it,” Henry says, stitching up the bite marks on my arm. “Your dad was right.”

“Yes,” I say, with a tinge of pride. “He was.”

Part of me wants to ask Henry about my father, but my heart says no. I know dad turned. He must have by now, and they would have put him down. That no one volunteers any information about my father leaves me feeling empty inside. Even Marge seems to be avoiding any discussion about the commune.

A cold wind blows from the north.

Clouds block the sun and the temperature drops.

Steve and I huddle under a blanket on the back of the wagon as the marauders move out, starting the trek back to the commune. I can see those three boxes strapped to the wagon. I know this is just the beginning, but finally we can fight back without fear of turning. Will we be able to find more supplies like these? Will we be able to figure out which drug kills the zombie parasite? Will we be able to make more of these tablets? We need to get this information out to other survivors. This is the turning of the tide, and I feel excited to be part of the fight back. I’m proud of my dad, proud of Steve, proud of David and Jane.

I fall asleep in Steve’s arms and, for the first time, I feel confident about the future.

Light streams in through the open blinds. I blink, unsure of where I am. My arm throbs. I sit up, realizing I’m lying in my bunk bed back in the main house inside the commune. I feel warm, and that stirs a familiar sensation inside me of being snug and safe. The past few days have taken on a dreamlike quality. I swing my legs around to get out of bed, suddenly realizing every muscle in my body aches. I’m not sure if that’s because I almost turned into a zombie, or if it’s from the long hike with such a heavy pack. I get to my feet slowly, keeping a steady hand on the ladder leading to the top bunk.

I’m wearing a nightshirt. I’m not sure who changed me or tucked me in, but I feel as though a week has passed.

“Hey, good morning, sunshine.”

“Steve!” I cry aloud, seeing him sitting by the window. He’s reading a book. He must have been sitting there for hours.

Steve gets to his feet slowly, suggesting he’s as sore and tired as I am. I can’t help myself. Regardless of the pain, I have to touch him, to hug him, to kiss him. I have to reassure myself he’s real. I rush across the room and throw my arms around him. Our lips touch and the pain in my body melts like snow on a warm, spring day.

“How long have I been asleep?” I ask, pulling back a little but keeping my arms around his neck.

“Two days,” Steve replies.

“Really?” My arms swing to my side like lead weights.

“We did it, Haze. We made it. We found the cure, just like your dad said.”

“I know,” I say, sweeping my hair behind my ears. Out of habit, I pick up a hair tie from the dresser and work my hair back into a ponytail. I feel conflicted. I want to rejoice, but I’m overwhelmed with grief. Steve seems to sense that. He’s always been attuned to my feelings.

“Come on,” he says, taking my hand and leading me to the door. “There’s something you need to see.”

“Where are we going?”

I can’t imagine what Steve wants to show me. I’ve spent the last six years in the commune. I know every nook and cranny in this old house and the grounds. There’s nothing I haven’t seen a hundred times before.

I follow Steve into the corridor. We’re holding hands, but only in the vague sense of the phrase, with our fingers barely touching as he leads me forward. If I want to continue touching his hand, I have to keep up with him. Steve is playful, which is a little confusing. I’m not sure if he skips or dances down the stairs, but he’s clearly excited about something, constantly saying, “Come on. Come on.”

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” I say, finding myself swept up in his enthusiasm. I don’t want to touch his fingertips, I want to grab his hand and never let go, but he teases me with a light touch.

“There you are,” Marge says, as we prance into the living room.

Steve raises a finger to his lips, saying, “Shhh!” And to my surprise, Marge falls silent. Her face lights up as she reads his body language. She seems to realize he’s leading me somewhere to a surprise.

Steve comes to a halt in front of my dad’s old office. He straightens up and gestures with his hands, waving one hand high above his head and the other low, saying “Tah-dah!”

My eyes dart from him to the door handle and back to him again.

“I—”

“Go on,” he says. “Open the door.”

My heart skips a beat. I want to say something, but words would betray my hopes. To speak would be to doubt. Am I dreaming?

Steve is grinning like the Cheshire cat. He holds his hands perfectly still as though he’s a magician revealing a secret. His smile melts my heart.

My fingers touch softly at the doorknob, but my eyes are on Steve. Our eyes lock and I feel as though he can see into the depths of my soul. Slowly, I turn the knob, feeling the brass fittings responding inside the lock, releasing the catch and allowing the door to swing on its hinges. I push the door gently, unsure of myself. I don’t want to expect anything. I don’t want to be disappointed. I don’t believe. I can’t believe. I can’t risk my heart breaking again, but Steve is beside me. Quiet, confident, quirky Steve.

The door squeaks softly on its hinges, and the man sitting at the desk inside looks up in surprise.

“Dad!”

“Hazel!”

I run into the room and just about knock my father off his chair. My arms wrap around his shoulders. His wounded arm rests in a sling against his chest. I can’t help but bump his sore arm, and I feel him wince, but he continues to hug me with his one good arm, kissing me repeatedly on the cheek.

“Oh, Hazel, Hazel,” he says as tears roll down his cheeks.

I release him and step back.

“But how?” I ask, reaching out and touching at his good arm, wanting to reassure myself he’s real.

Marge and Steve stand in the doorway.

Marge says, “We thought it might be too late for your dad, but those tablets work real well.”

“But he turned?” I say, not sure if I’m asking a question or stating a fact.

“Yes, he did,” Marge replies. “And old Ferguson wanted to put him down.”

“But you didn’t let him?”

Marge speaks in soft tones. “Your dad’s done a lot for us, and even in death I thought he could help. He predicted a zombie starved of light would die of natural causes within a few weeks. When he turned, I chose to honor his last theory. We’ve never seen a zombie just die without being bludgeoned or shot, so I figured we could allow him one last experiment. We kept him in that cellar.

“When you returned with the tablets, we figured we’d try them on a fresh zombie. What was there to lose?”

“H—How?” I ask as dad stands beside me, wrapping his good arm around my shoulder.

“Oh, you should have seen it,” Steve says.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Marge says, cutting Steve off. “It took four marauders to restrain your father. They stuck a couple of tablets on a forearm greave and he took the bait.”

Dad says, “Eight hours, Haze.”

“Eight hours to undo the curse,” Marge clarifies.

“So we can save them?” I ask.

“Not all of them,” dad says. “Those in the early stages. Yes.”

I’m speechless.

Dad sits down at his desk. Scraps of paper are scattered everywhere. He’s been furiously making notes.

“So what now?” I ask.

“Now,” Marge replies. “We spread the word. There’s a lot of work to do. This isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning.”

I’d like to thank my daughter Sarah and her fun-loving friends for some of the ideas around the character development in this novel.

This story came about indirectly at the suggestion of independent author Jason Gurley. I had the privilege of meeting Jason, his wife, and his wonderful young daughter during a trip to the US in early 2014. On a cold, wet night, they showed me the warmth of Portland, Oregon at its best. We enjoyed dinner together at Henry’s 12th Street Tavern, just around the corner from the largest indie bookstore I’ve ever seen: Powells.

In between writing books, Jason designs the odd cover. He produced a series of sample covers where he took an evocative image and matched it with a fictitious title. I saw
What We Left Behind
and immediately fell in love with the sense of wonder conveyed by the cover. I offered to purchase the cover from him, but he would have none of it, so I set about crafting a story that I hope lives up to the dark, haunting vision of his cover/title. This book would have never come about had it not been for that cover.

Our cultural infatuation with zombies is a reflex response to our own mortality and the reality that our lives are precious and unique.

Rather than a zombie virus, I’ve described interspecies relationships as the source of the fictional outbreak. It may surprise you to learn that there really are zombies in nature.

The research is still underway, but
Toxoplasma gondii
is a protozoa that lives in the gut of cats. The stomach is a somewhat transient environment, and if
T. gondii
is going to survive, it needs a novel way to spread from one stomach to another. Given its starting point in the gut, this has to involve excrement. But how to get back into the gut of another cat? Natural selection favored “zombie mice,” or at least mice that lose their fear of cats after eating feces infected with
T. gondii
. This bizarre behavior in infected mice conveniently provides the protozoa with another warm home. Over some immense period of time,
T. gondii
evolved to release toxins that drive mice mad, sending them gleefully after cats. It was either that or become extinct; such is the way of natural selection.

The problem is that these same neurotoxins have a
detrimental effect on humans
that inadvertently pick up this bug. So a targeted neurological response in mice can be decidedly nasty in humans as well. No, this doesn’t explain our love for cats, but it has been observed slowing our response times, dulling our reactions and effectively dumbing us down to a degree.

In
What We Left Behind
, the suggestion is that such an interspecies mix up could have far more catastrophic consequences, if you’ll pardon the pun.

And it’s not just
T. gondii
that’s capable of mind-changing effects. As farfetched as it sounds, even seemingly harmless microbes like
algae can have a disastrous impact on the human mind
, dulling our reasoning capabilities.

Another quasi-plausible suggestion I put forward to explain zombies focused on why they don’t rot away in books and movies. I suggest that they might transform into autotrophs, organisms capable of photosynthesis.
Elysia chlorotica
is an example of this—a sea slug that eats algae. But instead of digesting those algae as food, it harvests the genes that drive photosynthesis from its green guest so as to make its own energy.
E. chlorotica
even looks like the leaf of a tree.
Elysia chlorotica
is a solar-powered sea slug!

In this novel, I suggest that a similar kind of symbiotic relationship could be one of a number of strategies harnessed at a biological level by fictional zombies, prolonging their lives, but I avoided the subject of the harsh US winters that would slow them to a crawl.

And there are
numerous other zombie comparisons in nature
.
What We Left Behind
explores the possibility that such complex relationships between species of microbes and parasites could cause an outbreak, and that the focus on finding a single virus might distract from identifying the real cause. We’re in good hands, though. Scientists like
Dr. Siouxsie Wiles
from the
Super Bugs Lab at the Auckland University
are on the case, ensuring the zombie apocalypse will long remain fiction.