The Reanimation of Edward Schuett (7 page)

Beyond all the cages there was a loading dock, and here Rae found Ringo in a quiet conversation with someone behind a nearby desk. The man behind the desk was counting out a stack of bills, and Ringo stared at the money with a bemused look on his face.

“Are you sure that’s all you can give me?” Ringo said. “I brought in four. How many people actually bring in that many at a time anymore?”

“Not many. You’re still one of the best, Ringo,” the man behind the desk said. “But we can’t pay more money than we have.”

“What the hell ever happened to supply and demand? Supply is way down these days.”

“And so is demand. I’m sorry. Really I am. We’re all struggling lately. But this is the best I can do.”

“Yeah, well, just see how long I keep this up at prices like this,” Ringo said.

“If you stop that will be a shame, no doubt in that, but I’m serious. I can’t do anything else for you.”

Ringo sighed and grabbed his cash, and that was when he noticed Rae standing a few feet away. The man behind the desk noticed, too, and he stood up.

“Sorry lady, I don’t know how you got back here but we don’t allow people to bring in their own weapons any—”

“She’s with Merton Security,” Ringo said quietly.

“Oh,” the man said, “well, of course. Welcome. How can I—”

“I’m actually here to talk to him,” Rae said, pointing at Ringo. “Probably want to do it in private, right, Ringo?”

Rae didn’t exactly like her job, but as she sat there watching Ringo fidget like a kid who had just been caught playing with his parents’ semi-automatic, she had to think there were times where it was worth it.

She followed Ringo out of the loading dock and back to his truck, where he reached in and pulled a pouch of tobacco and some papers from his glove compartment. He offered some to Rae, and they both rolled a cigarette on the hood of his truck while they talked.

“So I would guess you’re here to talk about the one weird zombie I picked up.”

“Edward,” Rae said. “He said his name was Edward.”

“Yep, that he did,” Ringo said. He put his finished cigarette in his mouth and lit it, then lit Rae’s. “Christ, a zed isn’t supposed to have a name.”

“Not supposed to talk, either,” Rae said.

“I’ve got to tell you, I don’t have the slightest clue what I’m going to do with it. I thought at first maybe I could sell it somewhere special, like as part of a freak show or something. But I’m the one who’s freaking out here. These things aren’t supposed to happen.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. I tried to contact one of those zombie experts, even.”

Ringo didn’t look too happy about that. “I don’t think that’s really your place. The damned thing is mine, and anything like that is shit I should be doing myself.”

“In the event that thing is really sentient and conscious,” Rae said, “I don’t think you have any right to be calling it yours.”

“I’m the one who caught it, so it’s mine. Jesus, don’t go trying to act like it actually has feelings or a soul or anything.”

Rae thought as she took a long drag on her cigarette, then spoke. “And how do you know it
doesn’t
have a soul?”

“It’s a fucking zombie, that’s how. It died. Its soul is gone.”

“I’d usually be more than happy to agree to that, but just playing Devil’s advocate here. Did you happen to notice if it was breathing again?”

Ringo leaned against his truck and was silent for several seconds. When he spoke again his voice was quiet. “Yeah, I kind of did.”

“And if it’s breathing, then maybe it has a heartbeat. And it certainly seems to be able to think. So yeah, it was dead. But by any definition I guess it’s alive again. And if it’s alive, then maybe it has a soul.”

Ringo shook his head and flicked his cigarette away, noticing too late that he had only been half done with it. “I will never believe that those things could possibly have souls. They kill. They go up to people that look just like them and eat them. How can you possibly say that something that destroys something so close to its own kind could ever have a soul?”

Rae took another long drag and blew a cloud of smoke into the air, thinking about what Ringo said. His words made a certain amount of sense, she supposed, but she wasn’t sure if his logic was infallible. She had two gut instincts warring inside her. One fell in line with the words her parents had always said, all the things about how the only good zed was one with a bullet hole through its brain. The other kept coming back to that pleading look that had been on Edward’s face.

“Okay, so maybe most zombies don’t have souls,” Rae said. “But this other one is different. Even if it doesn’t have a soul, it’s still a living, thinking creature. And I can’t let you just keep it locked up in…um, where do you even have it right now?”

“None of your damn business. Now look, are you here on official Merton Security business, or are you here just to satisfy your own fucking curiosity?”

She supposed she could lie, but there was always the slight possibility that a lie could come back later and lose her the job. “As far as I know Merton doesn’t know anything about this Edward yet. The only people who know anything weird is going on are you, me, and your idiot friend.” She supposed Johnny knew, too, but she didn’t think that would make much difference. He was too interested in himself and his job to care much about some random weird zombie. Or at least she hoped. If he did get it in his head to tell someone at Merton she didn’t think anyone there would stop to consider questions of a zombie’s rights or soul. They would probably just see a smart zombie as a threat that needed to be eliminated immediately. Suddenly Rae wasn’t so sure if involving Johnny had been such a good idea, not if anybody hoped to get to the bottom of this situation without just shooting Edward in the head.

Ringo looked at his tobacco pouch like he wanted to roll another cigarette, then apparently decided against it. “Yeah, the problem with Charlie, though, is that last I saw him we didn’t part on good terms. Meaning he was threatening to blow that zed’s head off. He could be out drinking right now and blabbing to everybody about what he saw.”

“And if he does,” Rae said, “we’ll likely have people storming your place with torches and pitchforks looking for a piece of him. Please tell me you didn’t actually just lock Edward up somewhere at your home.”

Ringo grimaced. “It’s in my shed out back.”

Rae tossed her butt to the ground and smeared it out with her boot. “Which means we should probably move him.”

“What do you mean ‘we?’“ Ringo said. “I already fucking told you. My zombie to do whatever I fucking want with it.”

“And if you want to keep you miracle money-making zombie then you’ll let me help, got it?”

“Why are you even here? What the hell is it you’re getting out of this?”

That was a good question, one Rae had been wondering about for most of this conversation. She’d never wanted anything to do with zombies, and a smart, talking zombie shouldn’t have been any different. But it
was
different somehow.

Rae shrugged. “Maybe I just feel sorry for him.”

“It. You mean you feel sorry for
it
.”

“That’s what I said. Now come on. Maybe if we talk with it we can even figure out what happened that made it so special. You mind putting my bike in your truck and giving me a ride?”

“Sure, but would you mind putting your rifle in back, too? It might be a little large to fit in—”

“Not a chance in hell. Now let’s go.” She was so interested in getting her bike loaded and going to see the mysterious zombie that she forgot she had put her cell on silent, and she didn’t feel it vibrate.

Ringo hadn’t bothered to take anything out of the shed before he’d locked Edward in, and Edward considered for a while if he wanted to arm himself with any of the shed’s tools before Ringo came back. Ringo had the prod, but if he were quick enough Edward thought he might be able to knock it out of Ringo’s hands with a well-timed hit from a shovel. There was a weed whacker in here, too, although it was the electric kind and there wasn’t an outlet in the shed. Edward wondered if it would look threatening enough anyways, but that was just stupid. The weed whacker didn’t even look like it had been used in all the years since the zombie apocalypse, so it might very well just wimp apart if he grabbed it from its hook on the wall.

After enough time, however, he decided fighting his way out of here was a terrible idea. On a practical physical level it sucked. Although he was feeling much better now than when he had first woken up, he still felt stiff in most of his joints. Even if he could fight off Ringo, Edward still didn’t think he could run as well as he used to. Of course, for all he knew that had nothing to do with his zombie-like condition. That could just be that he was technically somewhere around 83 years old now.

And if he did run, where would he even go? If the condition of his arms matched the condition of his face, then Edward didn’t think he would be able to pass for an average human yet. For all he knew, everyone on the outside had heard about the freakish zombie that could talk, and if he were running around people might look for him.

Besides, he didn’t want to run. He only knew the bare bones about what had happened to the world, and he didn’t want to be out there in this new way of life while he was all alone. He wanted to know what had happened to his wife and daughter. He wanted to know what had happened to his home. And he really wanted to know how the hell he could be a zombie that was apparently in the process of being cured. Even though his fate was uncertain if he stayed, he thought he could get more answers from Ringo than out on his own. And Ringo would be more inclined to give answers if Edward didn’t simply attack him when he opened the door next.

Edward was only aware of the passage of time thanks to the subtle changes in light through the roof slats. The time had to be late in the afternoon, possibly coming up on dusk. He’d had a watch on him the day of the cookout, but at some point in the long time between it had vanished from his wrist. He’d also had a cell phone in his pocket, but the pockets of his jeans had also worn through long ago and everything that had been inside them must have fallen through. Not that the cell phone would have done him any good, anyway. He wouldn’t have been able to check the time unless he had turned it off and conserved the battery (and he wasn’t even sure if the battery would have worked after that long), and he couldn’t even be sure if the provider had survived the zombie uprising or war or whatever it had been.

It suddenly occurred to him that he was sitting here locked in a shed with some sort of zombie virus while he worried about his cell provider, and he had no choice but to laugh for several minutes. Then he had to cry for several more. By the time he was finished he actually felt a sense of relief. Whatever else was currently wrong with his body, at least he could still cry.

He didn’t know how much longer it was, but soon after he started pondering this issue he heard Ringo’s noisy truck pulling up into the driveway. He stood and waited by the door as he heard footsteps moving across the grass, and he waited anxiously as he heard a key rattling in the lock. He was determined to stand here and look completely harmless, as civilized as someone could when wearing only rags, the perfect picture of…

The door opened and Edward cried out as someone shoved the business end of a pink rifle in his face.

“Sweet Jesus, put that thing down!” he yelled. The woman holding the rifle, the same one he’d seen at the gate, looked shocked at his surprise, then sheepishly lowered the weapon. Ringo stood off to the side of the door snickering to himself.

“Sorry, I guess,” the woman said. “I just needed to be sure you weren’t going to try anything.”

“I don’t want to try jack,” Edward said. “All I want is for people to stop trying to kill me long enough so I can get some damned idea how the hell all this is happening.”

“Well, I suppose it’s about time we talked, isn’t it?” the woman said. “But not right yet. We need to move you first. Ringo’s friend—”

Ringo snorted. “I sure as hell wouldn’t call him that.”

“Ringo’s helper, Charlie,” the woman said, “he could always come back and try something. We need to move you some place safer while we figure out what to do with you. Once you’re moved, then we can talk.”

“Where are we going?” Edward asked.

“My place for now,” the woman said.

“I don’t suppose you can get me something to eat when we get there?” Edward asked. Ringo and the woman both tensed noticeably. “What?”

The woman raised her rifle slightly like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to aim it at him again or not. “And what exactly are you hungry for?”

Edward shrugged, and one of the last memories from before everything went hazy came back to him. “I don’t suppose you guys still have brats, do you? They haven’t just sort of vanished into history over the last fifty years?”

Ringo let out a single “Ha!”

The woman raised an eyebrow but grinned and lowered the rifle again. “This is Wisconsin. Of course we still have brats.”

“What,” Edward said, “you expected me to want brains?”

“I’ve never known a zombie to be too particular about what part of a person it eats,” the woman said. “But I guess I sort of thought something like that.”