The same was true of the building itself. From what Conrad could see, the glass of the main entrance had been shattered, and some fire-happy gunmen had unloaded a number of rounds into the brick siding.
He waited five minutes without moving. He waited ten. When he was certain he was the only one out there besides the dead birds in the trees, he slowly made his way forward.
The entire first
floor of the building had been ransacked. Doors kicked in, desks overturned, potted plants smashed on the floor. Cynthia’s desk had taken a very hard beating. Not only had all its drawers been pulled out, but one of those fire-happy gunmen had also used it for target practice. For what reason, Conrad couldn’t even guess, but the desk had nearly been obliterated.
Someone had left a key inserted in the elevator’s main console. All Conrad had to do to go to the facility below was simply turn that key.
Down here he found that all the security had been overridden. Doors that before had needed a specific keycard opened without trouble. Behind these doors were rooms ransacked in the same fashion as those upstairs. Every computer monitor had either been destroyed or discarded on the floor, while the computers themselves had been taken.
Gabriel’s room hadn’t been spared. The bars open, his chair was knocked over, the fish tank destroyed, all the books knocked off every shelf and torn into pieces.
He searched every room, his pistol at the ready. He saved Albert’s office for last. He wasn’t surprised at all to find that it too had been ransacked. What surprised him was that the scientist was still sitting behind his desk.
He was expired. Whoever had done it to him had tried to torture him first. But of course that hadn’t worked.
While his dead mind may have been sending him signals that he was in pain, Albert knew better. He would have refused to talk. He may have even laughed at their baseless threats. Maybe they would have taken him with them as a prisoner, but surely the wheelchair caused a problem. It would have been too much hassle for them. So they did the only thing that made sense.
They—these men, some of whom were no doubt Hunters—cut off Albert’s head with a broadsword.
He returned to the surface a minute later. He walked down the hallway. Past Cynthia’s obliterated desk, stepping over pieces of wood and glass, he kept the pistol in his left hand as he pushed open the broken door with his right, careful not to tear his decayed skin on any jagged edges.
A black Humvee was parked just outside the facility. Kevin stood beside it. He wore his black uniform but not his mask, and he had an assault rifle aimed right at Conrad’s head.
“Stop and drop your weapon, Conrad. You’re under arrest.”
Besides the few
birds chirping away in the surrounding trees, silence dominated this part of the woods.
Conrad stood there, the pistol in his left hand, staring at Kevin and debating in his mind all the different options he now had. There weren’t many. He could turn around and flee into the building, but Kevin would surely shoot him in the back. He could try to open fire before Kevin had the chance, but this would mean shooting with his left hand, his weak hand, and even if the gun was in his right hand, it wouldn’t make much difference.
Two seconds passed, three, and a new sound invaded the silence: glass and plaster crunching underfoot, coming from behind him.
Before he could move, the door was pushed open and hands grabbed at him. The pistol was jerked away. He was kicked in the back of the knees, sent to the ground, his face pressed into the concrete.
Handcuffs were snapped onto his wrists. The hands grabbed him again, pulled him to his feet. He was aware then that there were two Hunters behind him, holding onto each arm, now pushing him down the walkway toward Kevin.
Two more Hunters stepped out from behind the parked Humvee, rifles in their hands.
“I always knew you were a lot of things,” Kevin said, “but a traitor? That’s worse than a coward.”
As he was pushed forward, those hands gripping onto his arms, Conrad played with the cuffs. He wanted to know just how much give these men had given him. There wasn’t much.
“It’s bad enough that you’re afraid of zombies, but to actually be
working
with them? I don’t know how you can even exist with yourself.”
Conrad was brought to stand less than a yard away from Kevin. The Hunter lowered his rifle, smiled, and punched Conrad right in the face.
“Shit,” Kevin said.
When Conrad turned his head back he saw the man inspecting the fist he’d just used for the punch. His graduation ring glimmered in the failing light. On it was some of Conrad’s flesh.
“What the fuck?” Kevin picked the piece of flesh off his ring, flicked it at Conrad’s face. “You can’t fall apart just yet. Philip still wants to see you. He has a lot of questions. He wouldn’t be happy at all if—”
The rear windshield of the Humvee shattered. The Hunter standing closest to it turned, stared down at the raining glass, then up toward the trees. A moment later his head exploded.
Conrad hadn’t even been aware of the accompanying gunshots until he was thrown aside by the two Hunters holding him and everyone else there, even Kevin, returned fire into the woods.
He’d fallen to the ground on his side, gravity forced him to his stomach, and at once he tried getting back up but the gunfire was just too close, too heavy, Kevin and his men running around and yelling at each other, turning because now shots were coming from the other direction, and Conrad did the only thing he could do: he flattened himself on the ground and tucked his head down.
More gunfire, more shouting, the distinct tinkling of shattering glass, the thump of popping metal, then all at once the salvo stopped. There was a silence. A few more gunshots then, an almost intermittent beat, and then more silence.
Conrad stayed where he was on the ground, his head tucked down, his eyes closed. He tried listening for anything—even those dead birds in the trees—but the world had suddenly gone silent.
Then, out of that silence, footsteps on the macadam.
He lifted his head and saw two zombies walking around the Humvee and the scattering of bodies. They carried assault rifles and went to each body, checked to make sure everyone was completely expired.
Then the two zombies turned toward Conrad. In seconds they were on him. One pressed him down flat on the ground, the other fooled with the cuffs around his wrists, and he kicked his legs and moved his body, his only attempt at fighting back. A voice said, “Stay still,” and there was something about the voice that struck him as familiar, as if he should know it, but then there was an audible click and the tension on his wrists disappeared, the cuffs fell away, and the two heavy weights keeping him down lifted.
He lay there on the ground, unmoving, his eyes closed, not wanting to give these zombies the satisfaction of forcing him to see their faces before they expired him.
Then that same voice said, “Come on, Conrad, get up. We have a lot of walking ahead of us.”
He opened his eyes. Turned over onto his back. Stared up at the two zombies staring down at him.
James looked at Eric and sighed. Then he looked back down at Conrad, stepped forward, and extended his hand to help him up.
He heard the
cabin before he saw it, having walked now for two hours with James and Eric, both zombies leading him away from Living Intelligence and the mess they’d left behind. Following no trail Conrad could determine, passing between trees, stepping over branches, coming to a stream, and then following the stream as it bubbled and trickled over rocks, until the distant humming of a generator began to grow.
Gabriel met him at the door. The zombie asked him if he was okay. He even shook his hand. He brought him inside, where there was nothing more than a folding table and chairs, a few cots. A space heater sat in the corner. There was a pantry, with canned goods and bottled water inside. Gabriel offered Conrad something to eat, something to drink, but he declined. Instead he asked what he was doing here.
Gabriel explained how Albert had evacuated the entire facility. How he’d gathered everyone together, both living and dead, and told them it was a pleasure working with them over the years, but now their work had come to an end. How he then spoke to the living privately, told them about a place he’d built for an emergency such as this, and how Gabriel, who already knew about this place, volunteered to take everyone to it. Except almost nobody wanted to come. They wanted to make a run for it on their own. The few that did agree followed Gabriel for only an hour through the woods before they decided to turn back, leaving Gabriel with just James and Eric.
When the three of them were settled, Gabriel sent James and Eric back to Living Intelligence. They were to keep an eye out. For what, Gabriel wasn’t sure, but they were supposed to be careful. The two zombies witnessed the first raid of Hunters, then the second. They heard Conrad sneaking through the woods but did nothing, because they knew he had to see what had become of the facility for himself. Then when the third Hunter party arrived, they waited for the right time to attack, and then they brought Conrad here.
“And what am I doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. They were sitting on two of the chairs, James and Eric at the table, Eric typing at a laptop computer. “I suppose you should ask what we’re all doing here.”
Conrad wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so he didn’t say anything.
“The thing about life, about existence, is that none of it is explainable. Things happen because they can. Over five hundred years ago, when the living ruled the world, the dead stayed dead. Now the dead walk the earth, and somehow they grow and age, they can digest, they can think and breathe and talk, even though their hearts and lungs don’t work. See? It’s unexplainable. Just like how it happened, how one day everyone in the world was living and how the next day half of the world was the animated dead.”
Conrad watched the zombie. He listened carefully to each and every one of his words. He had to remind himself that the gray man in front of him wasn’t really gray at all; that his short gray hair was really light brown, that his gray eyes were really green, and that his gray skin was actually a pinkish pale.
“Nobody,” Gabriel continued, “knows why it happened, or how. It just happened. There are theories, of course. The most prominent among the dead, what they teach in schools, is that it’s simple evolution. You are the next step. But what they don’t teach in schools is that the purpose of evolution is survival. That species adapt to save themselves. If that’s the case, then why did the living evolve into beings that can’t heal themselves, that have no emotions? That, in the next hundred years or so, will be completely wiped out and decayed off this planet?”
Outside, the generator continued its low humming. Inside, Eric continued his quiet typing.
“My theory?” Gabriel said. “My theory is that Mother Nature got sick and tired of the living. That for the longest time we had been abusing her and her resources and she had had enough. Why should she die after everything she had done for us, after she had given us life? So that’s why she decided to change things. Turn the living into the dead to keep the planet alive.”
“Then how do you explain zombies like yourself? How do you explain Pandoras?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, life, existence, is unexplainable. All I have is a theory, and a poor theory at that. I do agree that the underlying texture of the world was changed by all the bombings during the Zombie Wars. I believe that the earth absorbed much of the energy and somehow solidified it. But I also think maybe Mother Nature wants to give the world a second chance. I think she wants to correct what went wrong. But the problem is that it wasn’t Nature that caused everyone to become the animated dead. They did it to themselves. To change that, they need to make the effort.”
Conrad was silent, trying to absorb all this information. He wasn’t getting anything solid, anything helpful, only conjecture. What he needed were answers, some way of saving his family, and he realized this zombie wasn’t going to be the one to help him.
“I think I made a mistake.”
“How is that?”
“I came here looking for help. I don’t know why I thought you might be able—or even willing—to help me, but it’s clear I’ve wasted my time.”
He got up from his seat.
“Please, Conrad, sit down.”
He just stood there, staring back at the zombie.
“Do you remember one of the first things you asked me?” Gabriel said. “At our third session, when the two of us had an actual tête-à-tête?”
Still standing there, still waiting.
“You asked what made me so special. And the truth is nothing does, because I’m not special. I’m not special in the same way you’re not special. None of us”—he gestured at James and Eric—“are special. It’s not who we are that makes us special, but what we do, the actions we perform.”
“Ruth said you were from Heaven. Is it true?”
Something changed in Gabriel’s face. He said, “What help did you expect to get from me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Norman said …”
“Yes?”
“He said you were my only hope now.”
“And why would he say that?”
Conrad shook his head.
“Maybe,” Gabriel said, “it’s because right now I’m the only friend you have.”
“You are not my friend.”
“Perhaps. But if it wasn’t for me, you would still be locked in that room they put you in back at LI. You would still be locked in there when the Hunters came on their raid. Right now, you’d probably be sitting in front of the new Hunter General.”
Conrad glanced over at the two zombies at the table, both whom were doing their best to act like they weren’t listening.