The Reanimation of Edward Schuett (2 page)

When he was finally in a standing position he took a deep breath. It was at once an unfamiliar sensation and a great relief. He had never thought that a simple breath could taste so sweet. The breath reassured him that, no matter what was wrong with him or what strange disease he might have, he was alive. For now that would have to be enough.

He walked down the aisle in slow, deliberate steps, having to concentrate on each one or else collapse once more to the floor. Even though he tried to keep his thoughts on the task at hand, his head was clear enough now that he could wonder what exactly had happened to both him and the store around him. He still couldn’t remember many details about himself, but considering his physical state that might be a blessing.

The department store, on the other hand, felt like a safe thing to contemplate. His first thought was that the store had to have closed down at some point and he had just stumbled into it, except there were the shelves to consider. A closed down store wouldn’t have all the merchandise on the shelves, but this place was still well stocked. As he made it to the end of the toy section and turned into a wider central aisle he found there was more ambient light, and he had a better view of his surroundings. He passed out of the toys and into housewares, glancing every so often down the aisles for anything that might be a clue. Most of the items here didn’t look they had been touched. Toasters, microwaves, blenders, and other such appliances were all forgotten, although here and there boxes or display models had been knocked off the shelves. Some shelves were nearly empty, though, leaving only a few towels scattered around. In the utensils section, most things were still there but all knives were gone. Although he knew these things should have been clues he still couldn’t put it together.

At least the layout of the store was familiar. It was a Walmart, specifically the one he remembered always going to for his groceries. That, in turn, sparked a few more memories. He remembered coming here to get brats and buns for a cookout. A Fourth of July cookout, in fact. The cookout had been a last minute idea, since Julia had suddenly found out that she didn’t need to work that day and they would be able to spend the holiday together. He’d come here, bought what he needed, went home to fire up the grill, but then…

Wait. Julia. The woman he had remembered sitting on the couch with him watching the race. That had been Julia. His wife. As soon as he remembered that, another memory came unbidden into his mind. The memory of holding her hand as she screamed, a memory that at first might have seemed like something terrible. It
was
terrible to begin with, since the pain she had been in was so bad and he had wanted to do anything at all to take it away, yet the memory was still happy. The pain had ended with the birth of their daughter.

He was married, and he had a daughter.
Dana.
These memories made him stop in his tracks and take another deep breath. He didn’t know how he could have possibly forgotten these things, but now that the memory was back he no longer felt so scared.

That still didn’t answer the question of what had happened here, though. The more he wandered the store the lighter it got, so the light had to be coming through the front doors, but the light didn’t show him anything that made the answer look simpler. All the items on the shelves had a thick layer of dust on them, so thick he couldn’t even see many of the labels, and several aisles were thick with old cobwebs. Whatever had happened here occurred a long time ago, but that didn’t seem possible. As far as his newly returned memories were concerned, the Fourth of July cookout had been yesterday, but the state of the store proved otherwise. His memories were not as fresh as he had initially thought they were. He didn’t want to think just yet what that might imply about Julia and Dana’s whereabouts.

The closer he got to the grocery section of the store the more he realized that, oddly, someone at some point had used this store as their home. The shelves in the grocery aisles were, unlike the rest of the store, picked clean, and in one far corner of what had once been the deli section he could see a mountain of trash and emptied tin cans. In the open spaces near the checkout lanes Edward saw several tents. A few were still standing while most looked trampled, but every single one of them looked as if they had been abandoned many years ago.

“What the hell happened here?” Edward murmured, and was shocked at the sound of his own voice. It sounded scratchy, out of tune, but still the relatively young voice he’d once possessed. It occurred to him now that if whatever had happened here was years in the past then he should have been much older, but he didn’t sound old. He thought for a second that he wanted to find a mirror and see what he looked like, then remembered the hideous mess that was his arm. On second thought, maybe he wasn’t ready to see himself after all.

The biggest sign that something had once gone wrong here, however, was the west entrance near the grocery section. Normally there should have been two sets of glass doors, one on the outside of the building leading into an area full of carts, vending machines, and a few video games, and the second leading into the store proper. Neither set of doors remained. Just inside the second set of doors there was a beat-up Hummer, its front windshield cracked and its front passenger-side bumper imbedded in the cinderblock wall. Glass from the two sets of doors littered the ground, sparkling in what light came in from outside. Colors were easier to make out here, and there were several dark splotches on the ground and walls that could only be dried blood. Edward stared at it all, trying to concentrate long enough to put together some scenario that would explain the scene. He was inspecting the Hummer, its driver-side door still open, when he heard a noise somewhere behind him in the store.

Edward spun around, or at least did his best to spin. His balance still wasn’t one hundred percent, and he tipped over and had to catch himself on the hood of the Hummer. He blinked several times, looking into the gloom further in the store, but his eyes had already adjusted to the light and the darkness farther inside looked deeper now. The noise had been low and light, and now that he thought about it maybe he hadn’t heard anything at all. His hearing was still fuzzy, although his sense of smell was strong enough that he thought he could detect something in the air, a dank and musty odor that still somehow included the lightest whiff of honey. It was possible he was only smelling himself, considering he did had a ripe odor like decaying feces. The odor would have made him sick if it didn’t for some reason feel comfortable and welcoming.

He had almost convinced himself that there hadn’t been any sound to begin with when he saw someone moving down at the farthest end of the store. There was a wide clear aisle that went all the way from the front doors to what he assumed were the doors to the storage area in back, and he thought he saw a humanoid figure moving slowly in the shadows. Edward stared at the distant figure for several moments, not quite believing his eyes, before he called out.

“Hey!” he said, holding his hands to his mouth to help project, but he was afraid he still might not be loud enough for the person to hear. “Down here! Please, you’ve got to help me, I think something is wrong with me!”

For several seconds Edward didn’t hear anything, and he thought the person hadn’t heard him. Then, low and echoing down the aisle, Edward heard the figure moan. The noise was deep with a rattling quality to it. It didn’t sound like a noise a human should have been capable of making.

Two more moans rose up from somewhere in the store. Whatever the hell this thing was, it wasn’t alone.

Edward slowly put down his hands and took a step back. He still didn’t have enough control over his feet to do the motion properly and he had to grab hold of the Hummer’s door to steady himself. The figure moved down the aisle, but it wasn’t moving fast. In fact, given its speed and distance, Edward thought most people would have easily been able to outrun it. Edward, unfortunately, did not seem to be like most people at the moment. He didn’t think he could run.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to, either. Judging from the moan and the slow inexorable way the figure walked, he guessed it wasn’t something he wanted to meet. A part of him even felt a deep fear as the figure came closer, every step bringing it toward the light where Edward could see it. Yet he wasn’t as afraid as he thought he should have been. He couldn’t explain it, but some deep part of him felt excited.

Edward heard another moan, one from outside, and he turned on the smashed-in entrances. Whatever was coming from out there wasn’t in sight yet, probably just around the corner from the entrance, but he got the feeling that it had heard him. There was another noise outside, a distant rumble, but he couldn’t quite place it yet. That noise didn’t seem as important right now, anyway. That was something far off, and whatever or whoever was approaching him from all sides was much closer. He could even hear the slow shuffle of feet coming down the aisle. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he turned to look, but it sure wasn’t the putrefied walking corpse that moved toward him.

Edward screamed and stumbled backward, this time not catching himself, and falling flat on his back. He flailed helplessly for precious seconds, unable to get up off his back, before his hand found the doorframe of the Hummer and he could pull himself back up into a sitting position, then back up on his feet.

In the time he’d been on the floor the dead thing had come closer and was now only about fifty feet away. There was no denying that it had been human once, probably female, but he could only recognize that by its humanoid outline. The skin was dark, almost black, and it had no more hair on its head. It reached out in his direction, and at this distance Edward could see that its fingernails had long ago fallen off. A few scraps of cloth still clung to it over the shoulders and at the waist, but the rest of its clothing had rotted away long ago, revealing patches of flesh stretched tight over its bones and what little muscle it still had. It moaned as it came closer, and again the sound was echoed by both something somewhere in the store and another one from outside.

Another memory suddenly came to him as the adrenaline started pumping through his veins. This wasn’t the first time he had seen a creature like this. The first time had been on the day of the cookout. He’d seen one coming across the neighbor’s yard. Julia’s scream and Dana’s crying at the sudden noise had attracted more of them, and soon waves of the things had been coming at their house. He’d seen other people, people that were still living, also running and screaming down the streets. He even remembered seeing one of the creatures bite James Rohmer from across the street, and James had fallen to the ground immediately, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Edward hadn’t seen what had happened after that, because he’d grabbed Julia and Dana to pull them back into the house and lock the doors after them.

These things might not be fast, but he had seen what could happen when a lot of them grouped together for an attack. He couldn’t be sure now if the moaning noises were an accurate indication of how many of the undead things were in the area, but there had only been one moan that he could hear from outside. He stood a better chance of escaping with his life if he ran (or did the closest he could manage) for the entrance than if he stayed in here and tried to elude however many might be hiding in the shadows.

He turned and did a staggering, stumbling jog for the light. The tingling feeling had mostly left, but the pain stayed, growing more pronounced in his knees with the sudden motion of his legs. After only a few steps his lungs burned with the effort. Running, apparently, wouldn’t be an option yet. When he turned to look at the thing following him, however, he saw that even at his slow speed he still moved far faster than the creature ever could.

He made it out the door and stopped just long enough to get his bearings and try catching his breath. He wheezed, and his lungs felt like there might be fluid in them, but he thought maybe he could force himself to keep up his run if it were in very short bursts. A quick look around revealed another one of the things standing less than twenty feet to his right, but even though it shuffled around a little, it didn’t look like it was moving closer. Edward walked away from it as fast as he could anyway, and looked around at the parking lot.

There was no doubt about it. This was the same Walmart he remembered, which meant he still had to be in his home city of Fond du Lac. There were a few abandoned cars in the parking lot, and several of the lampposts had their glass smashed out. There might have been a makeshift barricade of shopping carts and various items from in the store that had once surrounded the entrance, but it had been smashed apart at some point, probably by the Hummer. All the shopping carts were rusted with age now.

The sound he had heard earlier from out here was louder now, and he was certain that it had to be a truck or car of some sort. It was a ways off but loud, and Edward looked around for the direction it came from. He thought he could see it driving down the road toward the store, a rusty-red speck. He smiled, although the expression hurt his cheeks. Whatever the hell had happened here, whatever was wrong with him, at least he was not alone.

Edward looked back over his shoulder at the entrance and saw the dead thing that had been following him shamble out into the open, with at least one more visible inside. Edward took a few deep breaths in anticipation of running again, but after a few seconds it became apparent there was no need. Instead of coming for him the creature shuffled over to the one that had been outside, and it stopped. If there had been eyes in the first thing’s head, eyes that weren’t glazed over with thick cataracts, Edward would have thought it was staring at the second one. The third one came out and approached the other two, and the three monsters stood there, not doing anything other than swaying slightly in the gentle breeze.