Zombie D.O.A. (62 page)

“Strategy,” I snorted, “I’ve seen more strategy on…”

“Gentlemen?” a woman’s voice said and I turned to see Dr. Gish approaching. “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Joe, I’m afraid I must agree with Mr. Collins on this. It won’t work. You know yourself that Ruby’s responses are unpredictable, even if she were to activate, we might be in as much danger from her as they are.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “That’s it. I give in. Sam get your men together. Looks like it’s Butch and Sundance time.”

Sam turned to shout out a command to his men, but I only heard the first part of it. I was looking back towards the ambulance, where a dark-haired little girl had appeared. She was wearing a blue and green tartan dress with a ruffled white collar. One of her hands rested against the side of the ambulance and the other was held shyly to her mouth. Even at this distance, I could see that she had her mother’s dark eyes.

“Ruby!” Dr. Gish said, running towards the girl. “How did you get out?” Come, let’s get back inside. Come now.” She took Ruby’s hand and tried to lead her towards the back of the ambulance, but Ruby wouldn’t budge. She continued staring directly at me.

It is difficult to describe to you how I felt in that moment. The world around me seemed to come to a standstill. There were no sounds, no movement. Everything other than the perfect little girl in front of me became a blur. I was overcome by an emotion that was deeper than love, higher than elation. I wanted to run towards Ruby and scoop her up in my arms and just keep running until we were far from this place and everyone who wanted to keep us apart.

I felt tears welling in my eyes, spilling over, running down my cheeks. I saw that Dr. Gish was crouching down now, and whispering something in Ruby’s ear and that Ruby was nodding vigorously in the emphatic way that kids do when they want to make a point.

And then I saw Dr. Gish rise and take Ruby’s hand and they started walking towards me. The thirty feet they had to cover seemed to take forever and as they approaching I got down on one knee so that I could be face-to-face with my daughter.

“Ruby?” Dr. Gish said, “Do you know who this is?”

Ruby nodded and looked at her shoes, “My daddy,” she said.

“You remember your daddy?”

Again Ruby nodded, “My daddy carried me on his back in the dark, when the bad man was watching.”

For a moment I was confused, but then I remembered, me and Joe working our way through the sewers, running from Bronson Chavez. But how could she have remembered that, she’d only been two days old?

As though reading my thoughts, Ruby said, “The bad man looked at me,” and I recalled that too, the expression on Chavez’s face as we’d descended into the manhole.

I looked at my daughter and was overcome by the perfection of her, by the resemblance she had to her mother. The tears flowed again and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

I suddenly had an overwhelming need to hold her and I tried to draw her to me, but she resisted. Ruby was now looking past me to the field beyond, and her eyes carried a hint of the insanity I’d seen in Rosie, just before she’d died.

“We got movement out there,” I heard Joe say and I could hear the sound of Humvee’s being revved. I got to my feet and looked across the field and as I did, I felt Ruby slip her little hand into mine. If Pendragon’s men had shot me right then, I’d have died a happy man.

Back in New York three and a bit years ago I’d challenged a giant Z named Iakopo to a boxing match, knowing I had no chance of winning but hoping somehow for a miracle. The miracle on that occasion had been Joe Thursday and his sniper’s rifle, but I didn’t think Joe was going to save me now.

Still as I looked out across the field with the Humvees approaching and thousands of Zs running behind them, I felt strangely at peace, as though this is how it was meant to be, this is how it was meant to end. You may wonder why I wasn’t concerned for Ruby, standing by my side with her hand in mine. I’ve wondered that myself, many times, over the years, and what I’ve come up with is this. Crazy as it sounds, I believe that Ruby was transmitting to me, telling me not to worry, that everything would be okay.

The Humvees had stopped now, drawing themselves into a line about 500 feet from us, and the Zs too had stopped, although their insane humming soon reached my ears. Three Humvees at the center pulled forward and I recognized the man standing up in one of them as Roland Pendragon.

Rolly lifted something to his mouth and his voice suddenly boomed across the battlefield.

“Joe? Joe Thursday?” he sniggered, “Is that really you? Are you really that stupid? Did you really think you could take me on with some earth moving equipment and a few of your drinking buddies?”

He obviously expected a response, and when he didn’t get one he said, “What’s the matter Joe? Z got your tongue? That must have struck him as especially funny, because he chuckled to himself before continuing. “As you can see gents, the trigger has well and truly been pulled. Look around you and see the future of the world. An army that never tires, knows no fear and never has to be fed. That’s because they eat their enemies, in case you were wondering.” He giggled again.

“Now, this goes out to you other gentlemen, the one’s that Hey Joe managed to sweet talk into this suicide mission. I’m a reasonable man. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. I got no beef with you, so here’s what I’m going to do. This is a one time offer, mind, and it’s only good for the next five minutes.”

“Fuck you!” Sam Suchet shouted from behind me.

“I’m going to let that one slide,” Rolly said. “Here’s the deal. You send out Joe Thursday and the rest of you walk away scot-free. Five minutes, the clock starts now.”

“I’ll go,” Joe said.

“No you won’t,” said Sam. “Think Pendragon’s going to stick to his side of the deal? I say fuck him, let’s make our stand.”

“Oh, did I forget to mention?” Rolly’s voice boomed out again,  “I want that prick Collins too, and the doctor and her demon kids.”

  Next to me, Ruby emitted a dry cough that was strangely familiar. A low electrical thrum flowed through my fingers, through my hand, and into my damaged wrist. Any pain I’d felt in that wrist seemed to dissipate and then I suddenly realized that I was no longer holding Ruby’s hand, that Ruby was stepping away from me, that she was walking forward.   

I tried to move, to go to her, but my legs refused to carry me. I had that weird dreamlike sensation where time seems to stand still, and everything seems bent out of shape.

“Ah, here’s one of the freakoids now,” I heard Rolly say. “Don’t worry folks, it’s only the burnout.”

Ruby stood facing the field, a frail child with a braid running down her back. She didn’t raise her arms, as Justin had done, but merely stood and looked out at Rolly Pendragon and his Z army. A breeze seemed to flutter around her, ruffling the hem of her dress, and then a faint, white light, almost imperceptible seemed to pulsate around her.

“Two minutes to midnight, folks,” Rolly said, and then the light around Ruby brightened and pulsed outward and Rolly’s Humvee started to shift sideways.

“What the hell,” he said, and then he realized what was happening. “Fire!” he screamed, “Kill the motherfuckers!”

The Humvee suddenly tilted, hovered on two wheels and then was tossed sideways like a child’s toy flipping over itself again and again before coming to rest on its wheels and then imploding.

Out in the field mayhem now broke loose. The Zs poured forward engulfing the Humvees. Some of the gunners managed to fire their weapons, but most were simply overwhelmed, pulled from their vehicles and torn apart. The Zs then turned on each other, ripping and tearing and biting.

In the midst of it all, I saw Ruby collapse and it was as though the bonds that had been holding my legs were suddenly released. I dashed forward and scooped up my little girl and carried her back to the ambulance.      

“She’s going to be alright,” Joe assured me.

“Can I see her, Joe?”

He thought about that for a while and then said, “You can Chris, but with conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“Remember the conversation we had back in L.A.? Remember how I told you, you had to prepare yourself to let Ruby go?”

“I don’t think I can, Joe.”

“You can, and you must. Not just for your sake, but for hers, too.”

“But you saw how she interacted with me back there.”

“She isn’t always like that, Chris. Trust me on this. You saw what she did to Rolly Pendragon.”

“But I’m her father.”

“There’ll be days when that doesn’t matter.”

“So what now?”

“I’m going to ask you to leave it in my hands. We’ll give Ruby the very best care and attention there is. We’ll keep her safe, as much from herself as from anyone else.”

“Will I ever get to see her?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Chris.”

Joe always had a way of reading me, and right now he drew me towards him, “Come here you big ol’ bear. It’s going to be okay, you’ll see.”

Joe held me in a hug and hard as I tried not to blubber in front of my best friend, I let go and sobbed like a child.

“You done good, Chris,” Joe said into my ear. “I can’t think of another man in the world, myself included, who could have done what you did. You found Ruby.  You found her and now you know she’s safe, and with people who care about her. Nobody can ask for any more than that from you.” He continued to hold me for a while and then pushed me away and said, “Come on, let’s go see that little girl of yours.”

Joe walked me along a maze of corridors through the military hospital, eventually arriving at a ward where Ruby lay, still comatose, in a bed surrounded by drips and wires and monitors. Dr. Gish sat on a chair to one side, reading out loud from a children’s book. The doctor stopped reading when we walked in and gave me a nod.

I walked to the bed and looked down at the tiny figure of Ruby Rosita Collins, her pale face, dark hair and the gentle rise of her breathing. She was my daughter and I loved her more than anything in the world, but Joe was right. Ruby didn’t belong to me, didn’t even belong with me. Ruby was a child of a new and terrifying world. I was a child of the old world, clinging desperately on by my fingernails.

I ran a finger along Ruby’s hairline and traced it down her cheek, and that familiar low voltage thrum ran up my hand, up my arm, and through my entire body.  It seemed to speak to me, not in words, but in the vibration of the universe. “It will be okay, daddy,” it said. “It will be okay.”

I said my farewells to Joe Thursday and hitched a ride back to Yorba Linda with Sam Suchet. Sam insisted on taking me further and would have driven me all the way to Flagstaff if I hadn’t insisted that there really was no need. He eventually let me off at Victorville, with a Honda 350 off road bike to complete the journey, and a promise to keep in touch.

I arrived in Flagstaff in the early hours of the morning and made the sentry at the gate promise not to radio ahead and wake Kelly. I didn’t want to get her up in the middle of the night, and I also wasn’t ready to see her yet. It had been an emotionally draining day and I needed some time to gather my thoughts.

I cut the engine of the bike a block from Kelly’s house and let it drift the last hundred yards or so downhill.  Then I lay down on the lawn in front of the house and looked up at a sky brimming with a billion stars. I thought about the road I’d traveled starting in New York on that terrible day when I’d found Rosie bleeding on the floor, ending here in a city I’d never even heard of back then.