Zombies! (Episode 6): Barriers Collapse (8 page)

There were a couple of more zombies on the stairs. Apparently they'd been on the second floor as well as the third. They were no problem, though. He ran into them and through them, charred and blackened things. What kept them going, he couldn't know.

At the landing he stopped up short. Through the plumes of smoke, he caught a glimpse of a blackened glove. A moan reached his ears. The moan of a live person. It was Grant, Lemmon knew. He'd managed to grab hold of a stray support beam and was dangling between the second and first floors. A terrible part of Lemmon's brain told him to just go and save himself. That terrible part argued that he would wind up killing them both if he tried to help Grant. But Lemmon wasn't just a firefighter by trade. His was the heroic nature. It was why he'd rushed into the building in the first place. Batting aside a recalcitrant zombie, he went into the corridor, got down on his knees and grabbed hold of Grant's hand. Hanging from the remnants of the floorboards, Grant looked up at him and smiled through his foggy mask. He reached up with his other hand and Lemmon pulled. As large as Lemmon was, Grant was no small affair. Add on seventy five pounds of equipment and you have slow going. Despite all, though, it looked as if they were going to make it. Grant got his leg up over the side and Lemmon heaved with the best of his strength. Then three zombies appeared from the haze and set upon them. Out of instinct, Lemmon let go of Grant and fought the zombies. Grant struggled for a moment then fell. Then the floor collapsed and Lemmon and the three zombies tumbled after.

As they hit the bottom floor, the rest of the squad was rushing in, ready to fight fire and zombies to rescue their friends.

***

AFTER
Grant and Lemmon had been pulled out of the building, the rest of the firemen went to work on fighting the fire itself. Both Lemmon and Grant were badly hurt and had been rushed to the hospital. Grant was not expected to survive. Heron‘s men protected the fireman from any stragglers and cleaned up the zombies that survived the blaze. When things were progressing smoothly, Heron got on the phone with Smith to ask him if he'd seen anything like the leaflets the fire captain had handed him. Smith confirmed that they had arrested two people at
Angus Construction Yard
putting up the same signs that very night. They’d turned out to be the parents of Tiffany Percy, who'd been bitten there the week before. According to their statements, they'd printed the fliers themselves and didn't know of any other locations where zombies were being collected.

Heron ordered them questioned further. Then he wanted the DA to bring absolutely any charge he could against them. Clearly someone had set this fire in response to those posted signs. Now two firemen were critically injured. Before the day was out, Heron was determined to know who else was involved and see them in custody.

***

IT
was after eleven when Abby got home. The apartment was dark and quiet. Martin had gone to bed early. Heading into the bathroom, Abby stripped and got into the shower. Normally, she liked to shower in the morning but now she felt dirty. She couldn't quite explain it to herself. Nothing she had done was illegal or even unethical in the true sense of the word. At least, nothing except lying to Martin. And yet she felt as if she had turned a corner in her life, given up the purest piece of herself. Of course, she knew, it was because of Peter and Melissa. Both of them were truly damaged people. The source of Melissa's pain was clear, but not Peter's. They had suffered the same trauma, Abby and Peter. From the very first minute, they had both been there. What was the difference? Abby had worried for Sammy the entire time. But he had been fine. Peter had lost colleagues. Was that the deciding factor? Once you lose someone, anyone, to the zombie plague, does it make you so bitter?

Heron wasn't that bitter.

After her shower, Abby towel dried her hair, brushed it out quickly, and went to bed. By that time, it was midnight. Martin was laying on his back, snoring softly, the blankets tangled throughout his arms and legs. Abby tried to extricate them, but she'd have had to wake him up to do it. Instead, she went to the hall closet to retrieve the twin sized comforter they kept there. On her way back, she peaked her head into Sammy's room. He lay in his little bed, his blanket tangled up through his arms and legs. Like father like son. She smiled. She had so much and couldn't afford to lose any of it. But was what she was doing going to help protect them or drive them away?

With a heavy head, she crawled into bed beside Martin and pulled the narrow comforter over her body. She turned on her side and stared at him. She tried to stare at him for a long time, but couldn't. Sleep came quickly, driving the conscious thoughts from her head and opening the door for the nightmares.

***

ARRICK'S
boring life had become ever more so since the passing of Suzanna DeForest. True, she had been one of the nastiest women he had ever met, but she had provided him with an escape from the mundane existence of teaching and, well, nothing else. It bothered him that she was gone, but bothered him even more that he was mostly concerned with his boredom. It showed either that he hadn't loved her or that he just didn't have it in himself to care about others. As the days went by, he began to feel more and more as if it was the latter rather than the former. Of course, if he didn't care about others, he could hardly have loved Suzanna. As such, he was presented with a full blown identity crisis.

Always shy and pampered, Arrick had forever shunned strong personal relationships. He was close with his brother, in spirit if not in distance. His relationship with his parents had become strained ever since he'd moved from Scotland to the United States. His father had died before they'd had the chance to reconcile and even though he'd spent months with his poor widowed mother after that, they had grown no closer. He had a few friends and was occasionally invited out. Sometimes he went and sometimes not. Either way, it depended on his mood at the moment. Before the summer, he'd joined
Push Ups
gym as a way of doing something with his time other than grading high school English essays. It was there that he had met Suzanna.

For a long time, he had wondered what had attracted her to him. She hadn't been classically beautiful as some women were, but she'd turned the head of every man she passed. A pretty face accentuated by a figure that was toned from hours and hours of exercise pushed her well into range of gorgeous while Arrick himself was lanky and thin. He approached his workouts in much the same way as he approached the grading of those essays. It was necessary but not exciting. Maybe it kept some of the pounds off of him, pounds that would collect in his middle as he got older. Maybe it prevented his chest from sinking into his ribcage. But he would never be heavily muscled or well defined. So what had Suzanna seen in him? Even now, a month after her death, he had it narrowed down to two things. The first was that she had secretly wanted to find a good man who would be tolerant with her and love her for who she was. Not likely. The second was that she had mistaken his passive nature for timidity and felt that she could dominate him. He supposed it didn't really matter anymore.

Though gone these many weeks, the repercussions of his involvement with her were still having their due effect. Suzanna hadn't just died. She'd died and turned into a zombie. And Arrick, caught between his inward nature and the chivalrous hero that lay underneath, had sat with her through her illness and fought with her after she had turned. She had bitten him during the fight. A death sentence for everyone else, the bite had meant nothing more than a few hours of terror and suffering for John Arrick. Though he had exhibited all of the published symptoms of the zombie plague, he had made a full recovery. So full, in fact, that the two officers who had shown up at his door little more than half an hour after the symptoms had disappeared had had no idea that he'd been sick at all. And he wasn't about to tell them.

That was the next part of his identity crisis. Every day he struggled with the knowledge that he was quite possibly the only person in existence to have recovered from the zombie plague. That made him a coveted prize by the doctors who were working toward a cure. If only they knew about him. A month had gone by and he hadn't told them. He hadn't told anyone. He blamed the missed day of work on his chronic back problems and the fact that he hadn't called in on the medication. He'd lied to the police about not being with Suzanna when she'd died, but confessed to having seen her two days before. Though they found plenty of evidence that he had been in her apartment, they couldn't say when and, as her boyfriend, he'd been there often. Fortunately, they had never checked up on whether or not he'd been tested for the infection. The laws governing medical privacy were still in effect for the moment. Eventually, though, someone would make the testing mandatory. They'd probably lump it into the
Patriot Act
and call it a matter of national security. For now, though, he was safe. He didn't want to be somebody's lab rat.

Or was that really the issue?

One of Arrick's qualities, much to his own detriment, was that he was able to be completely honest with himself if not with anyone else. The fear of the poking and prodding was definitely real. Every time he thought about the road upon which he would have to travel if he gave himself in, he trembled with fear. But there was more to it than just the physical pain and inconvenience. There was the notoriety. He wasn't afraid of just being a savior or of being a hero. He was afraid of being noticed at all. Even if the people who worked wherever it was they took him kept quiet, he would still be the star rat in the lab. The attention he would get would be more than his type of ego could handle.

But there was still more.

Just having survived the disease had buoyed his spirits. Even if the apocalypse were to come down that very night, he would be able to survive where others could not. Unless of course, he was eaten. But now that fear was gone as well. His encounter with the two zombies at the deli had shown him that they simply had no interest in him. Perhaps there were remnants of the bacteria in his system. If they could smell it or otherwise sense it, it might turn them off. But he was sure now that he could literally step into a concert hall filled with zombies and move about with complete autonomy. With that sort of power, he could join the police force and clear the city of the creatures without ever being in danger. Or he could go to the address on the back of the business card given to him by the stranger at the deli and fight zombies for money. Or he could just do nothing.

…and remain ever bored.

On Friday afternoon he finished his classes and stayed late to grade papers. As an English teacher, the only time he had nothing to grade was at the very beginning of the year when he hadn't yet assigned anything. It was almost five o'clock when he left the building and by then he was bleary eyed. He walked slowly to the train station and sat staring at nothing all the way home. He made himself a quick dinner and then fell asleep in front of the television. He slept that way until almost midnight and then roused himself enough to make it to his bedroom.

Saturday brought with it a new light. He woke up late and went back to sleep still. He had resolved himself to doing no work. He'd even left all of the papers in the school. When he finally pulled himself out of bed, it was nearing lunch time. He ran in for a shower and then showed himself out the door. There wasn't much for him to do. He browsed in a book store, browsed in a video store, browsed in a clothing store. As the day aged, Arrick realized that each store held more and more of nothing he wanted or needed. Toward dinner time, he stopped in the grocery to pick up a few things and then went home. Once there, he cooked another light dinner and went for the couch and the TV.

The dirty old business card was on the end table. On the front was the advertisement for Bella D'talia Meats. Arrick had never heard of them. On the back, scribbled hastily down, was the address for the zombie fights. Beneath the address read the words "Fri and Sat only @ 9". Standing from the couch, Arrick went slowly into his bedroom and stared at himself in the full length mirror. He was hardly a fighter. Thinking back on his encounter from the other day, he recognized that he had actually been losing that fight. The only thing that had saved him was the fact that the zombies simply hadn't been interested in eating him. In fact, the first zombie hadn't had any interest in him at all until he'd attempted to keep it from the crowd. If he fought a zombie in the ring and could take it out quickly, he might have a chance.

Opening his drawers, he pulled out a pair of blue sweat pants and a matching T-shirt. It was early in the evening so he still had time, but he was eager to go. He dressed quickly, used the toilet, washed, and brushed his teeth. It was like he was getting ready for some obscene date. It didn't escape him that his last date had ended in a fight with a zombie.

By the time he was ready, it was seven o'clock. He went to the computer and punched the address on the card into Google Maps. He got a good view of the area's map and then checked out the satellite photos. The pictures were probably old because they showed a run-down warehouse that looked as if it hadn't been used in ages. Of course, that was just the kind of place you'd want for your zombie fights. After studying the area thoroughly, he printed out subway and walking directions and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. By 7:30 he was out the door and on his way to a little excitement.

***

THOUGH
the satellite pictures had shown the area in the daytime, Arrick was able to get his bearings pretty quickly. There were a lot of people on the train when he boarded but they slowly trickled out as the stops went by. By the time he reached his destination, there were only a few men with him and they all got off. For a moment, he was afraid. The men didn't look dangerous, but something had raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He might be invincible against the zombies, but that didn't mean he'd be any good in a fight with other people. Pretending to search for something in the pockets of his coat, he halted just outside the door of the car. The men paid him no attention and went off toward the station's exit. Forcing regular breaths in and out of his chest, Arrick tried to get control of his apprehension. After several moments, he found his body calmed and moved out into the street.