Zombie Day Care (8 page)

CHAPTER 14

Red. Green. Red. Green.
The basement was indistinct from the rest of the facility, cold and impersonal. More florescent lit corridors led from the elevator to a stairwell. As he made his way down the spiraling steps, an uneasy feeling set in again. Working upstairs was uncomfortable, but downstairs was downright claustrophobic. A red beacon awaited him at the bottom. It was time to get some answers. He sucked in his breath, scanned his card and the metal doors split open.

A pale yellow light illuminated the room that had the makeup of a forensics lab. A pair of autopsy tables kept two small bodies at rest. The smell of chlorine and vinegar, along with other pungent smells filled his nose. A large black man was pulling green and white striped papers from a loud printer. The man tore the sheet off and studied the results, pushing up his thick framed glasses.

Henry could hear, ‘
uh –huh’
, sounds muttering under the man’s breath. He watched as two big hands crumpled the large papers into a tight ball. The big man spun and shot the wad of paper over the autopsy tables. The ball of paper landed with a bang inside a metal trash bin in the corner.

“
That’s a three!” the man shouted in a deep voice, arms high, and fingers almost touching the high ceiling. Henry began a mild applause as the man lurched at the sound.

“
Well, look whose back,” the big man said, arms wide as he approached.

Oh no.
He felt the man’s arms wrap around him, pinning his arms as if he were a child. His feet left the ground for a long moment and his back cracked before he felt the hard floor again. Henry straightened his glasses.

“
Do you always have to do that?”

“
Of course … you’re my boy,” the man said, smiling. It was hard to resist Stanley’s charm. The man was always positive, his face wizened and cheerful, with a soothing and powerful voice. Henry’s anger had subsided, but not to the point he would not vent his concerns. As ingenious a scientist Stanley was, he still had his flaws.

“
Dad, why on earth is Jimmy back here?” he said, raising his voice. “What are you giving to the zombies? Is what I saw with Louie the XT serum?”

Henry stepped towards the man and looked up into his eyes, but Stanley turned away, shuffling papers on a desk.

“
Don’t worry about it son … you’re always so serious. Come over here, we had a break through while you were gone?”

Stanley draped his arm over his shoulders and shoved him along between the autopsy tables. Two girls in pink and white striped sweat suits were strapped down. Their faces were ashen, eyes sunk, skin dry and grey. Black pupils rolled all over without a flicker of knowledge. Their hands and feet flinched from time to time. He expected some moans, but they were silent.

Careful to keep his distance from the edge, Henry stayed at the foot end of the table.

“
What is this? They aren’t moving.”

“
They’re dying,” Stanley said in a sobering voice.

The words sent a jolt through his body.

“
What happened? How do you know?” Henry said, studying the two girls.

His dad leaned against the table, pulled out a cigarette and began to smoke.

“
Well, one day they just stopped moving.”

Stanley snapped his fingers.

“
They stood for days before they fell down.”

“
Aren’t Jill and Jean the oldest here?” he said, circling the metal tables and taking a closer look. He pulled an ophthalmoscope from his pocket and flashed a beam of light in Jean’s eyes. The girl’s pupils didn’t shrink, that wasn’t normal.

“
Yep, but they were also inflicted earlier as well. These are the senator’s grand girls. They’ve been in other facilities before.”

Henry was still finishing college when all of this happened. The senator’s family had made many visits, unlike the rest. Now that the senator was gone from office, his contact with the girls had been lost. The family had signed away on the girls and ceremoniously buried their memory. Henry suspected the senator’s influence funded Guthrie, and now those funds were diminishing.

If other daycares had experienced zombies dying, he had not heard. If longevity was an issue, this might be the first case. It felt good knowing these creatures would eventually die. It gave him hope.

“
How long have they been laying here like this?”

“
About a week,” Stanley said, as he pointed a red dot of a thermal scanner at Jill. “Seventy-five degrees. It was eighty when I brought them down here. I am guessing when it hits room temperature they’re done.”

“
Then what?” Henry felt a strange big of sympathy.

“
Then,
the up and ups
said to cremate them.”

The zombie girls were each hooked to a pulse and blood pressure monitor. The digital pulse figure was between 15 -20 beats per minute, compared to the usual 40 -50 bpm. The blood pressure readout was blank.

As his father blew smoke into the air, a hum and whir sounded and the wispy vapor was sucked into a vent above. The sound stopped. Stanley looked up, blew more smoke, and the sound returned, taking away the smoke, but the fans kept going.

“
So, is the cremation chamber working?” he asked.

“
Sure, that’s where all the garbage goes.”

It was a fitting end to the zombies. As far as he was concerned, they never should have stopped the genocidal disintegration. The zombies weren’t people; they were fleshing eating life takers, the bottom of the food chain. He saw it first hand, and it still horrified him. If there was anything he could do to stop them he would, but working for the WHS wouldn’t allow it. He kept those thoughts to himself.

He was deep in contemplation when he felt something brush against his lab coat. He let out a cry of alarm when he turned.

“
Mom!”

She didn’t reply. He backed up, facing her. Her curly red hair was in contrast to the metallic environment surrounding her. She was as tall as him, dressed in tight blue jeans and a brown wool turtle neck sweater. His nerves were on edge from the unexpected sight. It had been a long time since he had seen her. She opened her mouth to speak.

“
Num-Num. Num-Num.”

His heart collapsed in his chest. Her resemblance to the real thing caught him off guard. She followed him around the table as he backed away, giving her a closer inspection.
She has a wig on!
Her clothes, painted nails and make-up impressed the illusion of a real woman. Her cracked and sunken eyes, slack jaw and pasty hands reminded him she was still a zombie.

“
What did you do?” he said, voice cracking. He was freaking out. She almost looked like someone he once loved. He fought an instinctive urge to hug her. “Why is she here running loose?”

“
Henry … settle down,” Stanley said in a reassuring voice. “She’s as sweet as a kitty cat. Just look at her. She’s still got that something, makes those jeans look just right … just like the first time I saw her.”

He couldn’t hide his bewildered look.

“
That’s sick Dad!”

“
No son, that’s love.”

Stanley walked over and stroked her cheek.

“
Num-Num.”

It pained Henry’s ears to hear his mother say that.

If he wasn’t certain before, he was certain now, Guthrie was his least favorite place in the world. His mother, Linda, wasn’t home in West Virginia when the zombie outbreak came. She was at a teaching seminar in Houston, Texas. She had been one, among tens of thousands of victims. It was a miracle when they found her days before her scheduled cremation. They had no idea where to look after months of searching. A news camera, of all the dumb luck, caught her face on the evening news at a controversial location in North Dakota. Stanley fought like a man possessed to get her back, but it was Henry who called in a favor, to Nate McDaniel.

Henry’s irritation returned.

“
Is that why Jimmy is back? In case Mom dies. Is he going to be a pall bearer?”

His palms and fingers fanned out, beckoning for an answer. His mom gave up on his brother long ago, but Stanley just never understood. Stanley gave Jimmy too many second chances.

Stanley shrugged, moving away from the argument saying, “He’s family. He should have a chance to say good-bye. I never got that chance with my mom or dad. You don’t understand. Just let it be, it will be over soon.”

The sad look in Stanley’s eyes told the rest. Henry watched Stanley give his mother a kiss on the cheek.

Stanley changed gears and said, “Are you and Tori still getting on well. She’s a fine looking lady. She reminds me of your mother.”

Not this again. Please not this again.
It was too late, as Stanley had begun the story of how he met his mother. Meanwhile, his mother walked away, bumping over and over again into a book case.

“
I remember the first time I saw your mother. It was my first day as the assistant basketball coach at the middle school. Linda was coaching the cheerleaders. I never saw hair like that on a woman before ...”

“
Hey Stan—” but Henry knew it was too late to stop him from talking.

“…
I was broken down, and she was down too. Your dad left her and you two boys. He went to Vegas to be a comedian, and lucky for me, he never made it back.”

Henry buried his hands in his face. The story kept Stanley outside of the grasp of reality because he couldn’t cope with it. Henry let his stepfather go on, and Stanley wouldn’t stop now anyway.
Please don’t talk about the honeymoon.

“…
Both my knees were shot from college ball, but Linda talked me into trying some classes. I told her, if she went out with me, I would take classes. I loved playing ball, but if I’d never blown my legs out, I never would have realized what I could do.”

Stanley tapped his head with his long finger.

“
I ended up with a scholarship — in biology,” Stanley said with a wry smile. “Man, a scholarship in basketball and biology. My mom would’ve died if she ever new. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked science when I was a boy. Mom bought me my first chemistry set.”

Henry could recount the story word for word if he had to. Still he played along, mindful of his mother lumbering through the lab. It took about fifteen minutes of intermittent nods and
‘uh-huh’s’
before Stanley finished. The big man sat down at a metal desk chair and rubbed his knees as he watched his zombie wife. There was an exhausted expression on Stanley’s round face, stirring sympathy in Henry’s chest.

Henry hated to say it, but felt compelled.

“
You can’t bring back the dead Dad.”

Stanley’s voice was solemn when he said, “Christ did.”

“
Yes, but he was the son of God.”

“
The apostles did.”

Stanley flicked a long ash on the floor.

“
Dad,” his voice was soft as he patted his stepfather’s big shoulders, “you have to let this go. You look tired. How long has it been since you ate?”

“
I’m okay. It’s only been a few hours. Tori always brings me something down.”

There was long moment of silence between the two as the exhaust fans kicked off. Only the sound of Linda’s shuffling feet remained.

“
Okay. Let’s go back to Jimmy and the XT Serum. Jimmy has to go—now! Remember the last time? Do you remember what my sick brother did to the Jill and Jean?” he said, making a frantic motion towards the zombie twins strapped to the tables.

Jimmy did disturbing things with the girls, things Henry couldn’t bring himself to speak of. Jimmy was a self-absorbed little minion who’d do anything for a laugh or a thrill. No one ever understood Jimmy’s sick sense of humor.

His father was nodding; his face was in his hands saying, “I know, I know,” Stanley whispered, “… I’ll ask him to leave tomorrow.”

“
Try now!” he insisted. “Or I’ll do it.”

Stanley sighed, “You can do it.”

Some satisfaction filled him up. Getting rid of Jimmy would be the next thing he would do.

“
Now, what is going on with Louie upstairs? Is that the XT Serum?”

Stanley nodded, “I knew I should have waited.”

Life started to fill Stanley’s voice as he sat up.

“
Take a look at this.”

Stanley got up with a heavy groan and headed over to a computer screen.

Henry followed him and saw MRI head scans on the flat screens. One was cold, black, blue and grey. The other screen had flares of orange, green and red above the brain stem. He studied the data on the screen.

“
This was three days ago?”

His stepfather was nodding.

“
Who … Jill and Jean?”

Stanley pointed and said, “This one is Jean.”

“
But I thought they were dying.”

“
Well, being such, I thought they would be a better subject. I did both. Same results.”

It was significant. Brain activity on a zombie was almost obsolete, and now there was something. As a scientist, Henry couldn’t control his excitement. This was a big deal. All of these years in the facility had been spent dealing with children. Their brains were more apt to learn and absorb information. They relied more on instincts and had a stronger survival mode. Zombie children reacted to stimulus more often than adults. Their minds hadn’t been polluted and their brain cells were still an incubator of growth. The zombie children shed the most light for hope of a cure.