It was half past midnight and they weren’t doing very well. Two hours now they’d been out and about, first over by one of the parks in the city, then coming here, and so far Ruth had found no Pandoras.
This was something Dr. Hennessey had spoken to the Trackers about yesterday. How all the zombies at Living Intelligence knew about what had taken place at Heaven, and that for the next several days or even weeks, the zombies would go through stages of remorse, sadness, betrayal, before finally acceptance and, quite possibly, denial.
Only Albert and Gabriel knew that Conrad had actually been there, that he had participated in the slaughter, and he was thankful when nobody approached him to give details of what it was like. Conrad was still waiting to be called into Albert’s office, chewed out for how he’d spoken to and treated the zombie, but nothing had come of it. Albert had in fact pulled him aside, but it was only to thank him for going along with Gabriel’s request, and to ask if Conrad was certain he still wanted to drop the detail on Kyle.
“Damn, I hope it doesn’t rain.” Scott’s voice came through the earpiece in Conrad’s left ear. “It’s bad enough walking in this shit, but rain just makes it worse.”
“I hear you,” Brooks said.
Garry said, “I hate the rain too. I wish it would never rain again.”
The Shakespeare was less than a half mile away, and the constant rush of traffic was faint. It was so faint, in fact, that they had no trouble at all hearing the oncoming thunder sounding from the east.
“Maybe we should call it a night,” Brooks said. “What do you say, Scott?”
“You know we can’t.”
“But we’re wasting our time.”
By this point in the evening they usual had one, maybe two Pandoras. The same thing had happened last night. James, who always found the average, had led them to no Pandoras. It was clear his heart, his mind, even his soul, hadn’t been in the task. Now Ruth was exhibiting the same traits: walking aimlessly, slowly, her head dropped and her shoulders slouched. She’d taken off one of her gloves and held her hand out as she moved, grazing the bottom of her palm over the tips of the grass.
“Just give her time,” Scott said. “She’ll come through.”
They continued on, Scott and Brooks walking ahead of Ruth, Conrad and Garry following behind. The thunder was getting even closer.
“Look at this,” Brooks said, “she’s slowing down.”
Up ahead, Ruth had taken her hand away from the tips of grass. She paused, leaned forward, stayed that way a moment, then kneeled down.
“You think she’s got one?” Garry asked.
Scott said, “We’ll see.”
As Ruth inspected whatever it was up ahead, Conrad thought about the past couple days. About what had happened after he’d left Kyle’s party. How he couldn’t take it, all those people cheering him on, demanding a speech, and how he’d just walked away, gotten into his car, and driven to the Living Intelligence facility. Many times he started to phone the house but hung up before the call could go through. More than once he drafted an email before deleting it. He just didn’t know what to say to his wife and son, how to explain, and by the time he approached Albert about dropping the detail he had convinced himself he had done it all for selfish reasons.
Destroying Heaven apparently didn’t do the trick that many people had believed it would. The rest of the living in the world did not just die away. Apparently neither did the Pandoras. Or maybe that wasn’t the case either; maybe the Pandoras
were
dying away, the energy inside those crystal-like cubes dissipating, and that was the reason for the past two nights the tracking zombies could find none.
Ruth stood back up. She was holding something in her ungloved hand.
Scott said, “Anybody see what she’s got?”
Ruth stayed where she was, just standing there and holding what she’d found on the ground in the palm of her hand. To Conrad it appeared as if she was talking to it.
“Should we go in?” Garry asked Scott.
“We might as well.”
All four of them converged on the spot where Ruth stood. In the distance, an even louder peal of thunder sounded out.
It didn’t take long for them to get close enough to hear that Ruth was indeed talking. Whatever it was in her hand, she was whispering to it, cooing to it like a mother to its child—something that took Conrad back to the grocery store the other day, to Denise in the produce section cooing to that dead infant, and for the first time in a long while he thought about the coming twins, how now he was not just responsible for two existences, but four.
“What is that?” Scott asked.
With the help of the night vision glasses each of them could see exactly what Ruth now held in the palm of her hand. It was a toad. Tiny, the size of a baby, but that wasn’t the strange part.
The strange part was the toad was living.
At once Ruth stopped cooing to the toad, which just rested there in her palm, completely motionless except for its throat going big and small, big and small. She spoke in a hushed whisper.
“I never stepped foot inside Heaven, not like Gabriel. But do you know what he once told me about it?”
“Wait,” Conrad said. “Gabriel’s been inside Heaven?”
Ruth ignored him. “He said that some of the animals they brought in from the outside started out dead, but that by being in constant contact with the rest of them, the rest of the living, the animals just … they started to turn on their own.”
Scott said, “How can that thing possibly be alive like that?”
“I don’t know,” Ruth whispered. She held the toad close to her face, made kissing sounds at it, and Conrad noticed for the first time that there was a gap between her two front teeth. “Do you want me to ask it?”
“Give it here,” Brooks said. “We have to destroy it.”
Ruth placed her other hand over the toad and snatched both hands to her chest. “You most certainly will not.”
“Ruth,” Scott said, “answer me. How is that thing alive?”
“It wasn’t a few minutes ago. I spotted it on the ground, trying to jump away, and I picked it up. Then—it was so strange—it just started to turn. Right there in the palm of my hand.” She peeked inside her cupped hands. “How are you feeling, little baby toad? Do you like being alive?”
Brooks shook his head. “This is insane.”
Garry said, “We really do need to destroy it. Either that or take it back to LI and have it tested.”
“You’re not cutting him apart,” Ruth said, once more holding her cupped hands close to her chest. “After all the living that have just died, why must you also murder this helpless, defenseless animal?”
Before any of them could respond, Scott turned away and held a hand to his ear—which meant someone at Living Intelligence had just hailed him. He stood there for a few seconds, not saying anything, and when he turned back around his black dead gaze fell on Conrad.
“What is it?” Conrad said.
“It’s your wife.”
Conrad took an unconscious step forward. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s dispatch. They have her on hold. They say she called asking for you, hysterical.”
“Transfer it.”
Scott stared at him.
“What are you waiting for?” Conrad said, taking out his own earpiece. “Transfer it.”
“You know I can’t.”
“But something could be wrong. Something
is
wrong.”
Brooks said, “Scott, just let him take the call.”
“Yeah,” Garry said. “What harm can it do?”
Scott still looked apprehensive, standing there with his hand to his ear.
Ruth was watching Conrad too. She saw the expression on his face, what for a dead person appeared as worry. She sighed.
“Transfer it, Scott.”
He looked at her.
“If you want to take the toad, fine. But at least let him speak to his wife if it’s such an emergency.”
The promise of receiving the living toad without any fuss was incentive enough for Scott. He pulled his earpiece out and handed it to Conrad.
Conrad took it, placed in his ear, immediately said, “Denise?”
The operator said, “One moment please.”
The moment passed, enough for another peal of oncoming thunder, and then it was Denise he heard, his wife sobbing and saying hello, hello, hello?
“Denise,” he said again, and his wife stopped saying hello, started sobbing even harder. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
More thunder, almost on top of them this time, and as if on cue the clouds opened up, the patter of rain started coming down on their heads.
“It’s Kyle,” Denise said, and just like Scott had told him, she was hysterical. “He—he’s gone. Oh Conrad, our boy is
gone
.”
It was starting
to rain harder by the time they got off the Shakespeare. Garry drove the SUV, Scott in the front seat, Conrad, Brooks and Ruth in the back.
“Do you understand me?” Conrad said. “Does that all make sense?”
Ruth nodded.
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Only if I can have my toad back.”
In the front passenger seat, Scott shook his head. “Absolutely not. All of this is against protocol anyway.”
“Oh stuff it, Scott,” Brooks said. “If this was your kid, you’d be doing the same thing.”
The SUV’s wipers were working furiously to keep the windshield clear. Garry was hunched in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel, expertly swerving around slower vehicles. Every time they came to an intersection he’d call back to Conrad, who would tell him to either go straight or make a turn.
Ruth was watching Conrad, her eyebrows raised. “Well?”
“Scott?” he said loudly.
“I don’t care who your father was, Conrad, I’m not making deals with a zombie.”
“You piece of shit,” Brooks said. He unclipped his seatbelt and moved forward to grab Scott’s shoulder. “Give her the fucking toad.”
“No,” Scott shouted. “And keep your hands off me. Speaking to me like that is insubordination.”
“You know where you can stuff your insubordination?”
They came to another intersection. Conrad told Garry to make a right. Garry turned, cutting it a little too close, the SUV for an instant feeling as if it were riding on two wheels.
“Garry,” Scott said, as calmly as possible, “stop and turn back around. We’re returning to LI.”
Garry kept driving.
Scott looked at him. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
They were coming up to a traffic light. Conrad shouted, “Straight!” and Garry punched the gas, speeding them through the intersection.
Ruth said, “It looks like you have friends, Conrad. Friends are a good thing.”
He stared back at her, his mouth open, wanting to say something but not sure how to say it.
“Are you certain this is really what you want?”
Conrad nodded.
“Why?”
“I want him to be safe.”
“So you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Then I don’t need the toad.”
The rain was coming down even harder than before, the windshield wipers working even more furiously.
“Thank you,” Conrad said.
Ruth nodded. “But just so we’re clear? It’s not a Pandora your son has gone out to seek. It’s life.”
Two police cars
were already waiting outside 58 Orchid Lane. Their white and gray roof lights were flashing, flickering patterns across the nearby houses and lawns.
As Garry took the corner hard and started to let up on the gas, he shouted, “Masks!”
Each of them, even Ruth, had a black mask rolled up in a side pocket of their pants. They brought these out, threw off their hats, and pulled the masks down over their heads.
Beside one of the police cars stood an officer. He wore a rain slicker and a plastic-protected cap. His arms were crossed as he watched the SUV speeding toward him, and when it started to slow he uncrossed his arms and held up his hands.
Garry brought the vehicle to a sudden halt. All four doors opened and they piled out.
“Excuse me,” the officer said, “but what do you think you’re doing here?”
Conrad took the lead. He fished his Hunter’s badge out of his pocket, flashed it at the officer. “This is my house.”
The officer started to say something else but Conrad walked straight past him, the three other Trackers and zombie following close behind.
They cut across the lawn toward the front door. Conrad motioned Scott and Brooks to go with Ruth around the house. He’d already mentioned to the zombie that the back woods was where he suspected a Pandora lay.
Garry walked with him up the porch steps, through the front door, and into the existing room. There they found Denise on the couch, flanked by two police officers standing in front of her.
Even with his mask on she recognized him. One of the two officers had been saying something to her when Conrad and Garry walked in. She had been listening, holding a wad of tissues in one hand, but seeing her husband she scrambled to her feet. She burst out sobbing as she threw herself into his arms.
His one arm around his wife, he pulled off his mask and addressed the two officers. “What happened?”
One of the officers held a notepad, and he was the one that spoke now, saying, “According to your wife, she was asleep when she heard a noise downstairs. She got curious and went to investigate. Her son’s bedroom door was open, so she looked inside and saw that his bed was empty.”
She’d hurried downstairs then, he said, calling Kyle’s name, but there had been no answer. She went through the entire first floor, even down to the basement, and didn’t think to check the garage until she heard the puppy barking behind the closed door. She opened it to find that the puppy had been tied up, that the side door was slightly ajar.
“And apparently,” the officer said, “that was where she also found it. Or rather, where she found the location of the missing item.”
Conrad looked down at his wife, who continued holding him tightly, moaning and sobbing her dry tears.
“What missing item?”
The officer looked at his partner, then back at Conrad. “A shovel.”