Rendezvous: Chapter 19

The drive out to California was long and boring. Dee and Sam rotated driving and sleeping, raiding gas stations when they were both awake. Dee talked with Sam a lot, trying to work out just what the Hell was going on in her head. After two days of solid driving, they arrived in Northern California. A state map looted from a gas station guided them to the San Andreas fault line, and Dee was able to remember vaguely where she and her companions had first found the spaceship last time. They agreed that it was likely the case that the ship was not there yet, however, they might get a chance to figure out just what it was that the owner of the ship had found worth making a landing. If not, then they would go down to Dee's previous hideout and see what they could work out with the current residents.
A quarter-mile after the end of a dead-end road, the ship came into sight, glistening in the sunlight. If it was merely dormant now, perhaps they could go back again and right things. That was the plan, anyway.
The plan failed when they saw him. Standing outside the ship, gleaming in the sun, the man in white was staring right at them before they had even identified him. As the truck approached over the high desert scrub, more details came into view. His clothing was skin-tight and shining in the sunlight, and his head - no, wait - he wasn't wearing clothing. His "suit" was him.
Dee pulled the truck right up to the man and put it in park, the engine still running. She leaned out the window to get a closer look at him, now that the truck wasn't bouncing all over on its suspension.
"Welcome back," he said as she sized him up. "I was wondering when you would arrive."
"Well," Dee said, struggling for something snappy. "You look like you're just full of answers."
"Oh, most certainly. I was hoping for the same from you."
"Uh-huh."
"Dee? You know this guy?"
"Umm." Dee shifted her weight back inside the truck. "Not exactly."
"Please," the man said, affably. "Come, join me inside." He turned and stepped into his vessel. Dee and Sam stared for a moment, stunned by the surreality of the scene. Then Dee shut off the engine, and the two of them stepped out of the truck and followed the man in white.
Inside, the ship looked just as Dee remembered it. Now that they were out of the harsh mid-day sunlight, she could see that the man's skin was not white per se, but iridescent, almost like mother of pearl. Other than that, he looked like a standard Earth male, sans reproductive organs or any hair.
"So, uhh - who exactly are you," Dee stammered.
"My designation would be difficult for you to comprehend. You may call me whatever you wish."
"All right, then. I'ma call you Bob."
"Very well. Right this way, if you please." The women followed him deeper into the ship.
"So," she asked as they walked, "I don't suppose you're from around here?"
"Most certainly not," he said with a mechanical chuckle. After a pause, Dee spoke again.
"Yeah, so, uhh - what're you, an alien or something?"
"I suppose you might call me that, for my origins are far from your planet. However, others of your species would probably call me a god. A demi-god, to be more precise."
"I see," Dee responded at length. Sam, for her part, was completely occupied with looking around at the ship. It was, to put it mildly, unlike anything she had ever seen. A hidden light source followed them, illuminating their path. Glyphs hovered in the air, apparently responding to the man's presence, and shimmered as he interacted with them.
"Here we are," he said as they arrived in the room Dee recognized from last time as containing the terminal. She felt numb. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, coming at her as through a thick fog. "Dee, would you kindly interact with the terminal, as you did last time?" The man stepped aside and gestured to the interface as it sprang to life.
"I, uhh - sure. How - how did you know my name?"
"Oh, I know quite a bit about you, Dee. I've been watching you for quite some time. You and all your friends, in fact. Very interesting, the lot of you. Please, begin interacting with the terminal; we may speak as you do so, but I wish to get my investigation underway."
"Investigation?"
"Yes. It is a most interesting development that you were able to intuit the meanings of the machine language after mere minutes of exposure. My guess is that it is due to the fact that it is coded in the same language you are, and the two of you share much architectural overlap. In order to test this, though, I must observe your interactions with it." Dee stood frozen, trying to guess at what was being spelled out to her. "However, if you do not cooperate, I shall be forced to end your process and run simulations with a backup copy. The results will not be as reliable as this method, though, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would afford me the courtesy of your cooperation." The affable tone in Bob's voice did not falter.
"I - uh - yes. Yes, sure thing." Dee began staring at the terminal's interface and touching the glyphs. She had to focus to cut through the disbelief that seemed to weigh her mind down. Whatever Bob was saying, though, he wanted something from her, and was prepared to "end her process" in order to get it. Dee was certain she didn't want that. "Rosie?" Anxiety crept into Dee's voice.
"Uh - yes?" Sam's bewilderment was apparent in her tone.
"Please tell me that I'm not going crazy. You're seeing all this, too. Right?"
"I - I don't know. I mean, I see a guy. He's shiny. We're in his ship, I guess. You're using a magical computer. Hell, I think I'm going crazy."
"OK. That's OK. Maybe it won't be so bad if we're crazy together."
"Calm yourselves, please," the man insisted. "I assure you that you are both sane and lucid. This is very strange for you both, to be sure, but my investigation cannot proceed properly without your cooperation. I am monitoring both of you, and while your heart rates and blood pressures are elevated, you are not yet in danger of going into shock - oh, my mistake, it appears that Sam may be. Would you like me to administer a sedative?" Sam started at the mention of her name, then composed herself as she declined his offer. "Very well. Please take care to maintain your composure, I would like this to go as swiftly and conveniently as possible for us all." Bob smiled warmly and turned his attention back to Dee, who was staring at the glyphs in the air before her.
"OK, Bob," she said, manipulating the symbols, "I got a few questions for you."
"Go right ahead. I would be happy to discuss matters with you while you assist me."
"Good. OK. So. Were you the guy who bombed all our power plants?"
"Yes."
"And took out all our satellites?"
"Yes."
"And brought the parasite here?"
"Yes."
"So - OK, pardon me for being rude, but - why shouldn't I just kill you?"
"That is a good question, and please, allow me to respond before you decide to pursue such an unwise course of action. In the first place, I do not think you fully comprehend your role or mine in the larger scheme of things. Second, attempting to do battle with me would be quite pointless. To be blunt, I am able to become invisible, and I have the ability to do many things which would be quite fatal to your frail anatomy."
"Uh-huh. Invisible, eh? How's that work, then?"
"There is a photoreactive component in what you would call my 'skin' which, when dormant, is responsible for my iridescence and luster. However, when activated, it will bend light in your visible spectrum around me, rendering you quite unable to see me. I thought it would be the most effective way for me to conceal myself from your species. Observe." As the ladies watched, Bob shimmered for a moment and then disappeared entirely. Moments later, he reappeared where he had been.
"OK, neat trick. So how does the parasite work, then?" Dee kept fiddling with the glyphs, trying to figure them out so that perhaps she might be able to turn back the clock once again while Bob was distracted. It was a longshot, but the only chance she had - she was certain that Bob would kill them both when he was done with them.
"As you surmised, it functions by overwhelming the human immune system, and then takes root in the brain to alter both higher-order planning processes as well as base instincts. Your suspicions about the lowered metabolism of the host were also correct. Once the brain has been infected, the parasite induces what you would probably call 'brain fog' in the host, and gives it the urge to find and turn others, as you saw with the one you called Shep." Damn. He had been watching them rather closely. Pulling a fast one on him might be harder than Dee had suspected. "After introduction to the ecosystem, the parasite would spread over the planet, where it would infect but not kill plant matter, as you saw. Newborns, of course, would be powerless to resist infection, and within sixty years or so, all organisms possessed of a brain would be dead. Then, in another forty years or so, the parasite would simply die off, as it is genetically programmed to do after a certain length of time."
"All right, so you bomb our power plants, knock our satellites out of the sky, and turn us into zombies, then get rid of it all with your Houdini parasite. Fine. But the sixty-four million-dollar question is: why? What was all this for? An occupation or something?"
"Oh, most certainly not. Regrettably, I shall be forced to resort to analogies here, as many of the pertinent issues do not correspond to concepts for which you have words. Please, bear with me."
"Fine," Dee said, "I just want to know what's going on."
"Very well. There exist what you might call 'gods,' but they are quite unlike any that have been conceived of in the most dominant of your world religions. The are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor benevolent, and while they do not take a personal interest in the day-to-day lives of humans, they are quite keenly interested in the events that take place on Earth and in the Universe as a whole."
"And why is that?"
"Dee, in your career as a physicist, I am certain that you have made extensive note of the mechanistic regularity with which the world tends to function. Yes?"
"Of course."
"That is, quite simply, because the Universe - as you are able to conceive of it - is a machine. A sloppy one, I must admit, with all kinds of imperfections and inefficiencies, but a machine nonetheless. However, the results returned from this machine have already been used to help design better, more efficient machines. So, you may rest assured that once this one runs down, its legacy shall live on in other designs."
"So - you're saying all this is just an experiment," Sam asked.
"More or less."
Dee and Sam considered this for a moment.
"Wait a second," Sam said. "That still doesn't answer the question of why all this - the last couple months - why you did it."
"Of course not, but I am getting there. You see, this part - what you call Earth - had performed its function and was being prepared for a new one. The slate was being wiped clean, so to speak."
"So instead of blowing up the whole planet," Dee said, "You decide to turn everyone into fucking zombies?"
"I apologize for any inconvenience, but it would be the height of foolishness to waste such resources. There are many more useful operations that could be performed with this hardware, and destroying it utterly would simply be out of the question."
"You speak as though it's just some sort of computer."
"I suppose, in a manner of speaking, that that's exactly what it is. Do you throw away a pocket calculator when you are done with it? Of course not! You clear the data, and then perform a new calculation when you next need it."
"Doesn't that strike you as, I don't know, a little inhumane?"
"No, not in the least; quite the opposite, in fact. While under the effects of the parasite, humans experience a constant low-grade euphoria. The pursuit and infection of other humans is their raison d'etre, and while engaged in these activities, the pleasure centers of their brains are constantly stimulated. It was the most effective way we could devise to ensure that the hosts would keep at it. So, speaking from a standpoint of pleasure versus suffering, this was the most humane way to go about it. To be sure, those of you in the six-hundred forty-seven encampments to survive the first winter would disagree, however, you would be greatly outnumbered by those who were starving or otherwise miserable in the world before."
"I - you - that just -" Dee shook her head vigorously, and cursed to the air. "Look, that aside, that's not what I had meant. I was asking whether it was really humane to just conceive of us as programs in a computer. Isn't it unethical to simply shut us down like this?"
"That is a pair of questions, and I shall answer them in turn. It is neither humane nor inhumane to conceive of humanity as an aggregate program - it is accurate. That is what you are, and that is the intention with which you were brought about. Your second question will require the use of an even more clumsy analogy, but I hope you will bear with me. When you use your own computers, or play your own video games, does it ever occur to you what the software is 'thinking' when it asks you if you're sure you wish to quit the program? Or do you simply say 'yes' or 'no' depending on your intentions alone?"
"But - but that's different! Computers aren't people! Software doesn't think! Games aren't self-aware!"
"A matter of scale, nothing more. Compared to the gods, you can hardly be considered to be 'aware' or 'intelligent.' In fact, by this comparison, you are far more like isolated magnetic domain values than entities unto yourselves."
"Excuse me?" Dee was furious. "You can't be serious!"
"Oh, quite." The man's imperturbably pleasant tone was beginning to grate on Sam and Dee's nerves. "I don't think you comprehend the difference in scale at work here." Dee screamed at the air and kept working at the symbols.
"Then please, enlighten us," Sam said, her voice on edge.
"Very well, I shall do my best. When you start up one of your computers, you are able to observe the startup sequence, correct?" They nodded. "However, it all goes by so quickly, it hardly even registers. Do you agree?" Nods once again. "Even that higher-order output on the monitor, though, is the result of nothing more than ones and zeroes being calculated by the machine. And those ones and zeroes flicker by so fast as they are calculated, you would be unable to perceive them or even meaningfully interact with them, even if you were somehow able to look into the computer's components. Their output is so simple but so fast, and the concepts and terms in which you wish to communicate are so much richer, so robust, that it often takes you great spans of time to determine how to break it down into terms that the machine would be able to understand. Do you agree with these observations?"
"Yes," Dee said. "Computers are fast and stupid, people are slow and smart. Go on."
"To the gods, the users of this cosmic computer, your speech and thought processes are as the ones and zeroes in the machine - imperceptibly fast, though blindingly simple, and only truly meaningful in aggregate. The gods, to you, are as users of these computers - so slow and ponderous, a message may be sent with no response for days, and only that quickly if no deliberation is required." Bob's tone began to crack.
"Sounds like something personal," Sam said.
"Oh, I know firsthand. I have been in that position. Do you know how many times a computer's processor cycles while waiting for you to click 'OK?' How many more computations it could perform as you read the message displayed on the screen and decide how to respond?"
"I thought you said you were a god," Sam asked. Bob's tone returned to normal - that is, irritatingly polite - once more as he responded.
"Oh, no - I said that some of your species might call me that, simply because my abilities and experiences vastly exceed your own. However, it would be more accurate to call me a demigod, perhaps even a messenger. I am but a program, somewhat like you, though much longer-lived and vastly more capable, due to the necessities of my station."
"And you're just cool with that?" Sam was bewildered. Dee was lost in the glyphs, tapping them furiously. "You're fine with being nothing more than a cog in the machine?"
"Aren't we all? I don't see why I should be unable to accept and enjoy my role in the greater scheme of things. It is the only place I shall have, and I have known it for quite some time. As you may have surmised, I do not always enjoy every aspect of my existence, but I assure you that I am quite happy with my life when taken on the whole."
"So what kind of computer is this, anyway? I mean, if we're all calculating stuff, what's it for? What kind of answers are we outputting?" Dee gave Sam a thumbs-up over her shoulder, and waved her hand around to indicate that she should keep going. The man in white, his back to Dee, regarded Sam coolly for a moment before responding.
"My apologies, but many of the answers - even the questions - would take far too long to explain, requiring concepts and mathematics that very well could be beyond your ability to grasp."
"Try me," Sam said, trying to give Dee as much time as possible.
"I suppose that the short answer is that the users wished to see what would happen, in the same way that your theoretical physicists perform computer simulations in order to see what would happen. One discovery of import concerned the way you use numbers. It is fascinating to note that while most of your counting systems rely upon decimal notation, most of your species can only recognize cardinal numbers up to seven, yet you do most of your mental groupings in threes and fours. Truly, sometimes it is our failures that tell us more than our successes ever could."
"Ah-ha!" Dee shouted triumphantly and punched one last glyph with great enthusiasm. Bob calmly turned to look at her, and a set of glyphs moved to the center of the display. "Wait, what? Disabled?"
"Of course," the man said. "I could not allow you to step back the program's operation as you did last time. I am simply trying to determine how it is that you were able to use the terminal. That is all."
"I - you - son of a - fuck!" Dee was crestfallen. "So - well, shit. I mean, now that the gig is up, how come I didn't go back last time, like I wanted to? Is this thing broken or something?"
"Not at all. In fact, it performed your instructions to the letter. You ordered the machine to recompile the code from your time of birth, with the current iteration of your own variable exchanged for the original. It sent you back, all right. You did not ask it to send back my ship, your colleagues, or even your body, though. And so the machine did none of those things."
"I guess - I mean, I thought it would send, y'know, all of me back, not just my mind."
"When you consider a program, do you conceive of it as the media it is stored upon, or merely the data itself that is essentially 'the program?' Similarly, to the machine, 'you' are the sum of the data in your head, and not the head itself, nor the body supporting it. At any rate, I thank you for your time. My report is nearly complete. I will now escort you outside, before I complete my work."
"And what exactly is that," Sam asked as he led them outside.
"To stick with the computer analogy," he said as they walked, "I suppose you could say that this program has performed an illegal operation, and must be terminated. Before doing so, though, I need to compile the error report so I may display it to the users."
They walked in silence for a few moments, Dee and Sam both trying to work out how that could possibly mean anything other than what they feared it meant.
"Just what kind of program are you," Dee asked as she exited the ship.
"I suppose you could say that I am a de-bugger."
With that, the man in white turned and disappeared into his vessel, which shortly lifted off and departed into the sky. Sam and Dee held each other as they watched it disappear, then saw a flash of light, followed by pin-pricks descending to the Earth below. Each speck went in a different direction, and one came directly towards the two of them. As it neared, Sam buried her face in Dee's shoulder. Dee kept her eyes on the sky.
Dee felt the air moving as the thermonuclear warhead approached. She kept her eye on it as it fell to the Earth before her. She squeezed Sam and mentally counted down to when she thought it would detonate. She got to zero just as the weapon reached ground level.
Then she never felt anything again.

Rendezvous: Chapter 18

Chapter 18
Dee’s eye started to twitch. She held the note in her hands, staring at it, trying to integrate this new information with the events of the last month, with what little she remembered of her childhood.
Behind her, the box of tapes and papers beckoned. The video cassettes were arranged roughly in chronological order, judging by their labels; beneath them, the stacks of paper and binders bore symbols and contact information representing mental health institutions and various courts.
“Dee?” Sam was as nervous as she was confused.
“Yeah, Rosie?”
“What exactly happened in California?”
“I’m starting to wonder the same thing.”
They hauled the box downstairs to the TV in the living room and got the generator going. Dee found the tape with the earliest date, from when she would have been three years, six months old. The video quality was not very high, but this had been done in the early eighties, when consumer video equipment was bulky, expensive, and rare. A hand briefly came into frame before disappearing again, and then the focus adjusted and the camera panned to the view of a hallway. A woman Dee had only seen in photographs was leaning on a wall, arms folded across her chest. The camera froze on her for a beat, and she spoke.
“Just what the Hell do you think you’re doing, Tom?”
“Calm down, Tracy. I just want to be able to show this to the doctors. They need to see this with their own eyes, in case Dee gets nervous and decides to clam up.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You just want to document this because you believe her.”
“No, I don’t. I think it’s just as weird as you do. But I think there’s something going on here, and -“
“And what? And you want to get to the bottom of it? Bottom line, Tom: she’s crazy! I don’t know how, or why, but that’s all there is to it. Just let it go. This is freaky enough as it is, we don’t need to be preserving it for posterity.”
“Then don’t watch it. I’m gonna go talk to Dee.” The camera moved past the fuming woman into a living room strewn about with children’s toys. In the middle of the floor was three-year-old Dee, reading a book while laying on her stomach, feet kicking idly in the air. “Hey there, hon. What’cha up to?” The child looked up at the camera and beamed.
“Hi, Daddy! I’m studyin’ aggerculture!”
“Oh, really? And why are you doing that?”
“For when the zombie umpocalypse happens! We gotta be prepared, or ever’body’s gonna die.”
“Really? And how do you know that?”
“I saw it. I was there.”
“When was this? Should you have been sleeping when you saw these things?”
“No, Daddy, I didn’t dream it.” The girl on the screen rolled her big brown eyes. “I mean I was there, an’ it happened, an’ I found a way to come back an’ warn ever’body. I’m ‘onna save the world, an’ then I’ma get a physics prize when I find the time machine again!”
“That’s pretty far-fetched, you know. Some people might not believe you. What else can you tell me about all this?”
“Well, for one thing, we’re gonna need clean rooms, ‘cuz otherwise the parasite’s gonna get all up in our kids, an’ then -”
“That’s enough, Tom!” Little Dee went wide-eyed and silent at her mother’s angry shout. The frame swung around to capture Tracy’s livid countenance.
“Jesus, Tracy, what’s your problem?”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this! That’s enough, the doctors will be able to see that something’s going on, OK? This is freaking me out!”
“Well, then calm down. Why don’t you go have a smoke out back or something? We’re just talking, it’s not -“
“You’re not ‘just talking,’ Tom, you’re encouraging her! Whatever’s going on, you’re just feeding it by asking her questions.”
“Well, maybe if we ask enough questions, she’ll run into something to trip her up and then we can talk her out of this.”
“No! Not in this house! This is too weird!”
“Mommy, calm down.”
“Dee, I’m talking with your father, don’t interrupt us.”
“Mommy, he’s right, you should just calm down. Talking won’t hurt anyone.”
“See what you’re doing, Tom? Now she won’t shut up!”
“An’ why should I? I got a right to talk, don’t I? What are you afraid of?”
“Dee, honey, I’m - I’m afraid that my little baby girl’s really sick, and I don’t want her to hurt herself, or anyone else, and I don’t want to worry about what other people will think if they hear about this.” The anger had mostly faded from her voice by now, and tears were coming from her eyes. “They won’t understand you, sweetie. They’ll say really mean things that will make you feel bad, and you’ll wish you didn’t do the things you did to make them say those things.”
“What, the same way they did to you when you were in college?” Little Dee’s voice was flat, challenging. Tracy’s jaw fell open.
“What -?” Dee came back into frame, getting to her feet. “Tom, what have you been telling her?”
“What are you talking about, Tracy? I’m never around, I work all the time! I only even know about this because you told me!”
“He didn’t tell me, Mommy, you did. You told it to me when I was in high school last time, about the doctors and their drugs and their so-called ‘treatments’ on the hippie-farm. You just don’t want me to go through the same embarrassments you did in college. Well, I can handle it, OK? My daddy’s not an alcoholic, so I don’t have to sleep with other men to feel good about myself, so leave your baggage out of my life so I can do my work!”
“You - you fucking bitch!” Tracy came into frame as soon as she set into motion, raising her arm as she stomped towards little Dee.
“Jesus Christ, Tracy!” Tom set the camera down sideways on the couch, then ran around it to try to get between them. Dee was in frame again, standing her ground. As her mother approached and swung at her, the child reached for Tracy’s arm while simultaneously leaping with the force of the blow. Tom’s figure occupied the frame immediately afterward, obscuring what occurred. There was a scream and a thud, then Tom stopped abruptly and backed away. As he left the frame, Dee was standing upright with her mother face-down on the floor in an arm-bar. Her tiny hands were each gripping one of Tracy’s fingers, twisting her wrist and elbow in a way her shoulder wouldn’t turn.
“I’m not afraid of you, Mommy,” the child said. There was iron in her voice. “I’ve been killing zombies for years. I won’t let your personal hang-ups get in my way. So get over your bad self, and let me do what I need to do, OK?”
“Goddammit, Tom! Get her off of me!”
“Dee, honey, let your mommy go, OK? She didn’t really want to hurt you, but you can’t say things like that. They’ll just make people angry, OK?”
“Well, she needs to fucking believe me, Daddy! Everyone does! Or we’re all gonna die! I’m serious!” Little Dee started crying as she released her mother’s hand and embraced Tom’s leg. Tom scooped her up and set her down on the couch next to the camera, then went to help his wife up. Tracy had already gotten to her knees, and pushed him away as she rose to her feet. Her voice was low and detached as she spoke.
“That’s it, Tom. We’re through. I’m done - I am fucking done - with this. I’ll be back for my stuff later. You can expect divorce papers on Monday. You have fun with your little freak show. This is too much for me.” The door slammed, and she was gone. Tom was left alone in the frame, frozen, palms out in supplication, jaw open in shock. The only sign that the tape was still rolling were little Dee’s sobs from off-camera. Then Tom’s shoulders slumped, he moved to the camera, and the recording ended.
The tape picked up again during a birthday party. They both recognized Linda’s house from the Chicago suburbs - Dee was in junior high at the time of the recording. As the party wound on, Dee and Sam watched in silence, reeling from what they had just seen. After a few minutes, Dee ejected the cassette and popped in the next one.
Tom was alone at a table in a white room. After a few seconds, a door opened and closed, then a man in a white labcoat with a clipboard came into frame and sat across the table from Tom.
“So is that thing on, then?” Tom pointed to the camera.
“Yes, as you requested.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“It’s no trouble. Like I said, the hard part is going to be getting your hands on it. Sometimes you can request copies, but if what you told me is true, well - look, to be honest, I think you may need to take legal action. It can be done, but we’ll probably have to see a court order before releasing the records.”
“I understand.”
“OK, then. Is there anything else?”
“Not that I can think of. Shall I go get her?”
“Sure thing.”
Tom stood and left the room. He reappeared later with Dee, who sat at a third chair around the table.
“Hi, doctor!” She grinned and stuck out her hand.
“Hello there, Dee. You can call me Dan.”
“OK, Dan. Does my daddy hafta be here?”
“Well, strictly speaking, he doesn’t. But he can stay if that makes you more comfortable.”
“No, that’s OK. I don’t want you to think he’s coaching me or anything.” Dr. Dan let out a nervous chuckle and looked at Tom.
“Hey,” Tom said, shrugging. “It’s her show, I guess.” He stood and left the room again.
“So, Dee, your father tells me you have quite a lot on your mind. Why don’t you tell me all about it?” He readied his pen above the clipboard.
“Listen, Dan,” she said, reaching up to fold her arms on the table. “I know you’re gonna think I’m crazy, OK? But you hafta believe me, and I dunno what else to do.”
“Well, don’t be too hasty, OK? I don’t think you’re crazy. I can’t right now, because I haven’t even heard what you have to say. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on, and then we’ll see how things go. Does that sound all right to you?”
“Sure, fine.” Dee took a deep breath. “I use’ta be a scientist, OK? I was a physicist, I graduated from UCLA, and when I was twenty-three and in grad school, a bunch’a stuff went down. Twenty years from now, unless I get this all sorted out, it’s all gonna happen again.”
“Really? And what - went down?”
“First, the power went out. All over the world. Every power station got bombed, all within a few minutes of each other. The satellites went down, too, which made us think that whatever did it came from space. An’ three days later, the zombies showed up.”
“Zombies, huh? And what were they like?”
“Well, they’re not like the zombies you see in Hollywood movies. They’re technically alive, but the hosts of this parasite. It looks like a lichen sometimes, like a moss other times, or like a fungus. It can grow anywhere, it just grows differ’ntly depending on where it’s growing. It can even be like a slime mold when it’s living in the human body.”
“So you’re saying that this parasite - which isn’t just one plant, but several - it can infect people and turn them into zombies, huh?”
“It is one plant. It just goes into a different life phase depending on where it’s growin’ at. We think it spreads by spores in the air, and they latch on to stuff, and that’s how it gets everywhere so quickly.”
“We - that would be you and who else?”
“The other scientists. We all stuck together. We couldn’t do too much without power, but we still found out a lot with good-ol’-fashioned science.”
“I see. Let’s go back to the parasite for a second. How is it that an infection can turn a person into a zombie?”
“We never figgered that out exactly, but it had something to do with the brain. It works on the microscopic scale like zombies work on other people in Hollywood movies - just surround your prey and overwhelm them. It’s hard for it to get through the skin, unless there's an open wound - or I guess if you had a coma or something. But it mainly goes in through the lungs or stomach. You can hold it off indefinitely with booze and cigarettes, as long as you catch it early enough. Babies din't stand a chance, though - they were infected three, four days out the womb. Five, tops.
"Anyway," she continued in an excited tone, "I remember that it had something to do with the frontal lobe and the base of the brain - y’know, all that 'lizard brain' stuff. Decision-making processes and base instincts, that's really all it needed to change, the way we figured it. The rest of the brain - balance, coordination, whatever - that could all run on its own. After the infection takes root, it gets into the bloodstream and goes up into the brain where it grows like roots. But it gets into all’a major organs, too, since it needs to keep the host alive. The parasite also slows down the host's metabolism, which we think is why the zombies moved so slow but lived so long without food or water. We found redundant circulatory and nervous systems in various stages of development as the zombies lived longer an’ longer, too."
"How long did this go on?"
"Oh, about six years or so."
"Really? And what happened then?"
"That's when I found the time machine!"
"OK, tell me about that."
"Well, even affer we hooked up our generators and got things running, nobody else had power, and all the satellites were down, so we couldn't really do much. We started lookin’ around, though, and six years after the blackout started, we found some electrical signals from the North, by the San Andreas fault line. We thought it might be another survivor outpost, but they didn't respond to our messages, so we sent some people to look. What we found looked like some kind of alien ship. It's hard to describe. It didn't appear to have any weaponry, it was just all shiny an' stuff, so we drove up to it, figuring we were dead if we ran, anyway. We had all gone a little stir-crazy at that point, and just wanted a break in the routine. Well, nobody was in it, it looked like, so we went inside an’ started pokin’ around. At the back, I found what looked like some kind of computer, but way more advanced than anything we had built at the time. I managed to find a way to send myself back -"
"Wait a second. If this was alien technology, how could you use it?"
"I dunno. It wasn't in English or anything, but it was really simple to use. After staring at the symbols for a while, I just felt like I understood ‘em, like they were written to be recognizable."
"I see. Thanks for clearing that up. Please, continue."
"OK, anyway, I started recognizing physical constants, and it looked like it could be used to go back to points in time. So I tooled around with it until I got to the year I was born, and then sent myself back."
"But it didn't send you back."
"Oh, it did."
"Well - I'm sorry, I'm confused. Why is it that you only appear to be three years old, if you were really twenty-nine when you used the time machine?"
"I'm not sure how, but it sent me back to the way my body was at the time. So, I have the mind I had when I went back, but with a renewed lease on life, I guess."
"And you didn't tell any of your scientist friends in the ship?"
"No, I thought the whole thing was gonna go back."
"Oh, it didn't?"
"No, I told you, it only sent my mind back. Otherwise somebody would’a found the ship by now."
"Of course."
The conversation wound on and on, little Dee explaining details of the situation that confirmed their findings over the past month, as well as what Dee had thought were her own delusions resurfacing. Sam was aghast, Dee was stone-faced. After about thirty minutes of talking, Doctor Dan sent little Dee to go get Tom. He came back alone.
"So what's the story, Doc?"
"I'll be straight with you, Tom: I don't envy you."
"Huh. Yeah. I can see that."
"I'll definitely want to review that tape you've got. Have you made a copy?"
"Yes, I duplicated it in case you wanted to keep one, it's out in the car."
"I do, and thank you. It will be one less thing you have to get back from us, I guess." Dan jotted a few things down on his clipboard. "We'll want to perform a few tests on her, nothing invasive, just some cognitive assessments and CT scans. The results will be shared with you, but as for getting copies of your own, well -" Dan trailed off, alluding to yet another red tape barrier in Tom's way.
"Yes, I had assumed so."
"OK, then we can discuss the tests out in the waiting room, I'd like to schedule what we can at the same time."
"Sounds good." The two men stood and left the room. There was a brief jump, and the time-stamp changed to a few weeks later. Otherwise, it was the same shot of the same room. Dee and Doctor Dan entered and sat at the table.
"So, Dee, how have you been?"
"I been well, thanks."
"Things going OK at home?"
"Yeah, they're fine. Mommy left, though. I guess I won't have a brother, after all."
"Hm. Speaking of your mother, your father showed me a tape of you from a few weeks ago. Do you remember that?"
"Yeah, the one when I was readin’ up on aggerculture?"
"Yes, that's the one. Do you remember what happened after that?"
"Well, yeah. It was just a couple weeks ago."
"Can you tell me about it?"
"Ugh. You watched it, didn't you?"
"Yes, but I want to hear how you'd describe it."
"Fine. I started talking about the future. Mommy threw a fit. Dad an' I tried to calm her down, then she started projecting fears from her own youth onto me and I called her out on it. So she came over and tried to hit me, and I put her on the floor.”
“Uh-huh. Those were some pretty fancy moves you had on that tape. Not many three-year-olds could take down a fully-grown adult.”
“Well, she doesn’t really know how to fight. I mean, she took some judo and some tae kwon do when she was in college, but that was a while ago, and she didn’t really stick with it, anyway.”
“Hm. So, where did you learn to fight like that?”
“From one of the survivors who stuck with us. He was a second-degree black belt.”
“Ahh, neat. Is that in - karate, then? Tae kwon do?”
“No, none of those.”
“Well, which martial art, then?”
“It’s called ‘bujinkan.’”
“Uh-huh - and how do you spell that?”
“Bee you jay eye enn kay ay enn. Boo-jin-con.”
“I see. And what manner of martial art is this, then? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Meh, you can look ‘em up on the web.”
“The - excuse me, what ‘web?’”
“Y’know, the inter - oh crap, that’s right. This is only 1987. Look, in a few years, everyone’s gonna have a computer in their home. Like, the progress with ‘em is just going to be amazing, leaps an’ bounds beyond the pocket cacolators we got today. An’ all the ‘puters are gonna be connected by a network that spans the whole world - well, the whole developed world, anyway. It’s called the ‘internet,’ or the ‘world wide web,’ or just the net or the web.”
“Computers, huh? You mean like that clunky beige box with the green letters on the screen, right?”
“Hmph. Comparing that ‘puter to a ‘puter from twenty years from now is like comparing a Model T to a Lamborghini Gallardo. I mean, sure, they’re both technically automobiles, but one’s a relic and the other’s an example of state-of-the-art technology.”
“Umm - there is no Lamborghini Gallardo. At least, I’ve never heard of it.”
“Of course there is, it - oh, dammit, that’s from 2003. OK, nevermind. But do you get the idea?”
“Sure, I guess. You’re saying that in twenty years, computers will make progress equivalent to almost a century in the automotive industry?”
“Yeah, it’s Moore’s Law, accelerating returns an’ all that. The better machines we build allow us to build even better ones, an’ those allow us to build even betterer better ones which are even more an improvement than last time.”
“I see.”
Once more, the conversation wound on, then little Dee left the room and Tom entered.
“Hey, Doc.”
“Hi, Tom. How are you?”
“Eh, I’ve been better. Tracy’s still living with her parents, but she’s having second thoughts about the divorce. Things are just really busy.”
“I can imagine. How’s Dee?”
“She seems to have calmed down a lot. I guess she really just wants to talk to someone about this.”
“That seems about right. I have the results from the tests here, would you like to go over them now?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“OK. Well, let’s see what we’ve got.” Dan pulled a folder from behind his notepad on the clipboard. “The tests we performed on her are helping to put this into perspective. Intellectually speaking, she’s got the cognitive abilities of a college graduate. It’s quite frankly amazing. The imaging we did on her brain also shows highly-increased brain activity in nearly all areas. Her mind - look, this is - Jesus, Tom. If I had fewer scruples, I could make a career on this girl.”
“What do you mean?” Tom raised an eyebrow.
“I mean that her brain is highly developed, and I don’t know when it would stop. There are people who would want to study her, but - look, sometimes, ethics doesn’t really keep a strong hold over actual practices, OK? I look at her, and I see a sweet little girl who’s really smart but also really confused. Others wouldn’t see her like that. They’d see her as a puzzle, something to be figured out, and they’d probably try to get you to sign all kinds of releases to do all kinds of things to her that would screw her up for the rest of her life.”
“Why are you - I mean, you’re not doing yourself any favors by telling me this.”
“I’m not trying to make myself look good here, Tom. I’m trying to do what’s right for her. That girl - if she can get her head screwed on straight, there’s no telling what she might be able to do. But not if a bunch of researchers get their hands on her. They might never let go.”
“So - OK, what are you saying I should do?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. And truthfully, that’s up to you. You have to follow your own conscience on this and do what you think is right. Just be careful, OK? Watch out for her.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but - Jesus. I don’t know.” Tom held his head in his hands. “I don’t know what’s right. I don’t know what will turn out well. I don’t know how to do the best thing for her.”
“Nobody knows the future, Tom. You’ve got to make decisions you can live with.” Dan put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I told you last time, I don’t envy you. I’m not going to sugarcoat this - you have a lot of hard decisions to make.”
“I know.” He sniffed and rubbed his eyes. “OK. So what’s next?”
“Well, the tests show that Dee’s incredibly intelligent, but getting to the bottom of what’s causing her to say and think these things, that’s going to take some time. Do you want to schedule another appointment?”
“Yeah. Let’s do that.” They stood and left the room, and there was another jump in the time stamp to a week later. Dee and Dan entered and sat down once again.
“So, Dee, what do you want to talk about today?”
“Dunno, Doc. What do you want to know?”
“I’d like to know whatever you want to tell me.” Dee sighed and put her elbows up on the table.
“Look, Doctor. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I don’t think you’re taking me very seriously. Nobody does, it seems.” Dan put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. He took a deep breath before speaking again.
“Dee, I want you to listen very carefully to me, OK? I take you seriously. I really do, and I want you to believe that. However, the things you’re saying are very far-fetched and hard to swallow. There is a difference between you and the things you say, and for a person in my position, that is a very important difference. Do you understand?”
“Please don’t patronize me. You don’t believe me, and that’s OK. What would it take to get you to believe me, though? How can I convince you?”
“Well, let’s see.” Dan leaned back in his chair and tapped a finger on his chin. “I suppose actually seeing the time machine would be a very strong piece of evidence for your case.”
“I told you, we didn’t even see it until twenty-three years from now. And it didn’t come back with me. I don’t know how it works, so I can’t build a new one. I thought it would come back with me, so I didn’t really plan on needing anything else to convince people.”
“OK, well, if you know the future, then tell me some things that will happen.”
“Well, I already told you about the development of computers.”
“Yes, I remember you talking about that last time. I went to the library and looked some things up - I understand you go to the library a lot, too - and the things you said - well, after checking some facts -“ Dan stammered for a moment before continuing. “To be honest, what you say doesn’t sound that far-fetched, now that I’ve done the research. Actually, it looks like a very educated guess - and you are highly-educated, to say the least. And for someone with your intellectual abilities, I don’t see it as that far of a leap to hypothesize that things will go the way you say they will.”
“Well, how about elections? George Bush is gonna win in eighty-eight, and then Clinton in ninety-two - he’s the governor of Arkansas - and -“
“No, Dee, that’s even easier. Elections are a fifty-fifty shot, more or less, and I can’t see those as anything more than lucky guesses.”
“Well, dammit!” Little Dee slammed her hands down on the table. “What’s it going to take, then?”
“Dee, the claims you’re making are extraordinary, and they’re going to require -“
“Extraordinary evidence, I know. Carl Sagan said that.”
“Yes. Good job. Now, I have to look at what the most likely explanation is. You are an extremely intelligent young girl, Dee - probably more intelligent than anyone I’ve known. However, you’re also very young, and children your age typically have imaginations that run wild because they don’t have the experience required to rein in those extraordinary imaginations. So please, put yourself in my position, and ask yourself what looks most likely in this situation: a little girl has an incredibly detailed and completely unfalsifiable story of what the future’s going to be like. Is it more likely that she’s telling the truth? Or is it more likely that she’s confused, caught up in her own fantasy world?”
“Well, when you put it that way -“ Dee’s shoulders slumped, and her arms fell into her lap. “OK, then put yourself in my position. You know what the future’s going to be like, but you’re helpless to prove it. Nobody else will believe you. What do you do?”
“That’s a tough question, Dee.” Dan sat up in his chair again and folded his arms on the table. “I really don’t now. It’s hard to say, because I’m not actually in your position, and I don’t know what it’s like to be you. If I had any solid evidence, though - anything at all - then I would try to bring that forward to convince people. Otherwise, I would probably just bide my time and prepare myself. That’s what I think I would do.”
“But - I mean - dammit! Lives are at stake here! People are going to die - lots of people - and a whole lot more will, too, if nobody listens to me!”
“That may be so. And lots of people have been in that position in the past. How many military advisors do you think have had their pleas fall on deaf ears, only to see their worst fears come true on the battlefield? They were right, too - but nobody would listen to them. And if nobody will listen to you, railing about it won’t help you get your point across. It will just make you look like -“
“Like I’m crazy.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“That’s what you meant, though.”
“Other people would probably say that, sure. And, well, other people will hold a lot of influence over your life. Even if they’re wrong, you have to take them into account. What it comes down to is: do you want to be right? Or do you want to be effective?”
“I want to be both. I know I’m right, so how do I be effective with that?”
“Well, what do you think would be the most effective course of action, if nobody listens to you?”
“I guess - I guess - I would just have to wait it out.” Dee’s head bowed in thought as she said this. She looked defeated. From there, little Dee talked about her feelings about the situation, how helpless she felt to change things, and Dan returned to his usual clinical self. This was his territory, this was progress to his mind - getting past the facts of the situation and discussing what they meant to people, and the effects they had on feelings and relationships and how those affected interactions between people. The conversation wound on, and eventually, Dan and Tom were in the room again.
“How are things at home, Tom?”
“Tracy’s thinking about coming back, now that Dee’s in therapy. I told her how Dee had started calming down, now that she had someone else to talk to, and that seems to have improved Tracy’s opinion on the subject.”
“I see. Hopefully, she can come back for good. Dee would probably show much more improvement in a stable household.”
“Yeah. So what’s next?”
“Well, Tom - I think we made some good progress this session. She’s starting to understand how other people think of her fantasies, and the effects they have on those around her. However, I think that we may want to try some other things as well.”
“Such as?”
“Well, did you have a chance to look over the side effects on the medication information sheets I gave you?”
“Yeah, I read them all. They look pretty intense. I’m not so sure about them.”
“Well, we have two options. And they’re not mutually exclusive, we can try them in combinations. The first is therapy, the second is medication.”
“OK.”
“I would highly recommend therapy. Dee seems to get a lot out of talking to people, and I think interaction is really what she needs at this point. However, she has some really solid beliefs in her fantasies. She’s a child, after all. These fantasies, while extraordinary to you or me, are really just blown-up versions of the fantasies that any child has - the difference is that Dee has the intellectual capacity to flesh them out with convincing details that other children can’t. When adults do this, we call these fantasies ‘delusions.’ Dee shows all the classic signs - she’s thoroughly convinced, her story is unfalsifiable, and she lacks the slightest bit of evidence.”
“I just - it seems that putting a child on these drugs, while she’s still developing - I think that could do more harm than good.”
“That’s true. There have been studies to show that if a person isn’t psychotic, then antipsychotic medications can actually induce the conditions they’re meant to treat. There is a small possibility that if this is merely an overgrown fantasy and not a full-blown delusion, the medication may exacerbate her condition.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m worried about. I mean - maybe this is just wishful thinking, but if she talked herself into believing these things, can she maybe - do you think she can talk herself out of it?”
“That brings us back to the therapy option. I’m glad you came to that conclusion, Tom - I’m at the same point, myself. The human mind is a very powerful thing, as I’m sure you’ve seen. If Dee is - if she’s under the impression that she’s on these medications, and undergoes therapy in tandem, I think we could get her to do exactly that. She would probably look up the side effects at the library or something, and maybe imagine that the sedative and amnesic properties were taking hold, in effect talking herself out of it without actually subjecting herself to the potentially harmful side effects.”
“Are you - I mean - lemme get this straight, Doc. Are you trying to get me to hypnotize my daughter?”
“No, not hypnosis. Well, not in the Hollywood sense, anyway. No dangling pocket-watches or ‘you’re getting sleepy’ nonsense. However, we would in a sense be trying to use the power of suggestion on her. The way I conceive of it is this: we’re giving her another, better fantasy to counteract the one she’s got, and it will eventually be indistinguishable from reality.”
“And when she’s old enough, well, then we can spill the beans. Right?”
“Ideally, yes. That’s the hope. We just want to get her, as you said, to talk herself out of this fantasy until she’s old enough to grow out of it on her own.”
“And when would that be?”
“I can’t say for sure. This isn’t a hard science, exactly. I don’t even know if it will work, to be honest, but I think it’s worth a shot, and I think it would be the safest option to try at first. What do you think?”
“I think - I need to sleep on this.”
“I understand. Take as much time as you need. If, as you say, just talking to me is calming her down at home, then maybe we won’t even need to go that far.”
“Yeah, hopefully.”
“Same time next week, then?”
“Sure, sounds good.”
“OK, let’s go tell Carrie up front.” The two men stood and left the room.
“Jesus Christ,” Dee said, staring at the TV. “What the fuck?”
“My God,” said Sam, equally in shock. “I mean, I’ve - everyone knows about the placebo effect, but this - this is just - how on Earth could they -?”
The women stared, numb, as the next session played on tape. The story, as best they were able to reconstruct it from the other tapes and various documents, was that Tracy had moved back in and things went back to normal for a bit. Then Dee started to backslide, culminating in the pipe-bomb-at-the-library incident, and Tracy walked out again, this time for good. So Tom started going along with Doctor Dan’s recommendation for suggestive therapy, and it worked. Little Dee fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. She talked herself into forgetting everything she had known from her previous life. When Tom moved, he had to take legal action to get the records released, but he got copies of all the hospital records and court transcripts so he could hold on to them. Dan, for his part, downplayed the extent of Dee’s condition to another doctor in Illinois, and her therapy continued uninterrupted. Eventually, when Tom felt she had a handle on things, the talk therapy went away altogether - but this was after numerous backslides during gradeschool due to a not-entirely-smooth transition between therapists.
Tom saw how well Dee was doing scholastically and socially, and didn’t want to rock the boat with the news until after Dee had graduated college. He didn’t even tell Linda. While Dee lived under his roof, he handled all the prescription pick-ups, then handled the legal forms regarding the placebo medication when she left for college.
Dee was floored. It was too much at once for her to feel anger, sadness, frustration, anything but utter shock. Sam, too, was bewildered beyond words. They watched and read in silence, eyes wide, mouths shut.
As darkness fell, Dee rubbed her eyes and finally spoke.
“Well, I think we’ve seen enough.”
“Um. Yeah. I think so.”
“Then I guess we go to California?”
“I guess so.”

Rendezvous: Chapter 17

Numbness hung thick in the air, a cloud above the crowd of people. For long minutes, they stood together, silent in contemplation. Some of them, individually, had broken down over the course of their stay, but the majority of them had held strong. Now, they were all starting to lose it. It was just too much. Too much to comprehend. Too much to handle. Too much to sort out. Just too much.
Dee was lost in her own reflections. Even if they managed to die of cancer or old age, they were still probably doomed as a species. If her guess was right, the parasite worked microscopically in the same way that the zombies worked macroscopically: surround and overwhelm. It was the only way she could make sense of the fact that the parasite could grow on stone, yet seemed able to infect only from the lungs or the stomach, apparently unable to penetrate unbroken skin (though, to be fair, she had never actually seen a person turn due to an infected wound). The way Dee figured it, more air and fluid passed through the human body than went around it, so that was probably the only way the parasite could get a foothold against the onslaught from the human immune system - but she was with adults right now, whose immune systems had been tempered by years of struggle against viruses, bacteria, and fungi of varying strains and strengths.
Newborns were not nearly so well-armed.
"Well," Seamus said, after minutes of silence, "As fun as this is, I'm gonna get back to work." The crowd dispersed into smaller groups at that point, going about their daily tasks as with weights upon their shoulders.
Days later, Shep had showed no variation in his speech or behavior. The vegetables who had had the parasite removed showed no change in their condition. The survivors experienced no improvement in their mood.
Dee was on watch detail one night when Jack came up to the roof.
"What's up," she asked as he approached and sat down on the rooftop next to her.
"Hey. Can I bum a clove?"
"Sure. Free to all. Didn't cost me a dime."
"Yeah, that's right. Thanks." He took a cigarette and her Zippo and lit up. She did the same a moment later.
"That it, then?"
"No. I've been thinking lately, and, well, I'm back to my plan to kill myself."
"You've thought it over?"
"Yeah."
"And you're sure?"
"As I'll ever be."
"Well, then. I don't tell you how to live, I won't tell you how to die. Heh. I hope it's everything you expect."
"Ha. Yeah, so do I."
They smoked in silence for a while. Dee eventually spoke up again.
"I think I'm gonna head out soon."
"You plan on hitting the hospital?"
"No, I mean for good. This is - well, shit, no sense in sugar-coating it to you. It's pointless. I just want to go somewhere else, do something else."
"Just travel until you die?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I want to stop by my parents' place in Wisconsin, see if I can find out what happened to them. After that, well - I guess I'll see where things go from there."
"Yeah. Well, have a good trip."
"Heh, I'll try, thanks."
Another long moment passed before Dee asked Jack when he planned to do himself in.
"Oh, I dunno. Maybe I'll watch the next sunrise. I was hoping to read more books, but really, every day that goes by just gets me more depressed. There's just - well, no point, like you said. I thought about traveling, too, but I didn't want to have to worry about zombies everywhere I try to sleep. I'd rather kill myself than be one of them, but on the road, I might not get the chance."
"Yeah. Good call, I guess. Do you know how you're gonna do it yet?"
"Well, I wanted to jump from the top of a really tall building. I've always wanted to know what that would feel like. But I can't think of any that I could safely get to, and I don't want to risk surviving the fall from here and becoming zombie food. I'm probably gonna shoot myself in the head."
"Y'know, if you want, I could drive you to a radio tower in town or something."
"Nah, I'd be too worried about you not making it back."
"No, I'll do it when I'm leaving town. No worries."
"Really? When are you leaving?"
"Dunno. I've been thinking about it all day, but I haven't talked to Rosie yet. I guess it all depends on her."
"Well, yeah, if you're gonna leave in a couple days or so, let me know." After a moment, he added, "You know, you're really fuckin' bad at suicide prevention." Dee shrugged her shoulders and took a drag.
"I figure that part of being human is being able to determine the course of your own life. If you can't do that, you may as well determine your death, right? I think a lot of suicides are stupid people who can't see past their invented problems, but this is a different story. I actually see you as trying to claim some of your humanity with this."
"Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking, too. I mean, not exactly like that, I was mainly thinking that this was really the only statement I could make. I'm not gonna wait for something to kill me, I'm taking matters into my own hands, you know?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I've given it some thought, myself."
"Huh. Never would've pegged you for it. Well, then." Jack stubbed out his cigarette, stood, and dusted off his pants. "I'm gonna walk around for a while. Let me know after you talk to Sam."
"Sure thing. Actually, can you grab watch for a sec? I'll go ask her now."
"Of course. See you in a bit."
Dee descended the rope ladder and found Sam cleaning the zombie pens. She was the most interested in what the currently- and formerly-infected could tell them, and so took it upon herself to do the most maintenance work. She found it relaxing, despite the constant nearby moaning. It inured her to the far-off moaning of the zombies outside as she tried to sleep, and so she took it in stride. She raised her head as she heard Dee approach.
"Hey, Rosie."
"Hey, sweetie. What's shakin'?"
Dee looked around before answering. "I'm thinking of clearing out. But only if you come with. What do you say?"
"Just - taking off? For good?"
"Yeah."
"Shit, I thought you'd never ask."
"Huh. Really?"
"Yeah. I mean, you got your whole zombie-survivor-fortress thing going here, I didn't think you'd want to walk away from it. And I sure as Hell didn't want to leave you, but - well, shit. This sucks. Here. I mean, it probably sucks everywhere, but I need a change of scenery, y'know?"
"Well, you wanna take off tonight, then?"
"Shit yeah! Let's fuckin' blow this joint!" Sam jumped to her feet and put away the tools she was using. "Night-time escape into the great unknown! I'm all for it!"
"All right, then. Let's say our goodbyes."
They went to find Seamus first. He was reading in the hammock he'd set up as a bed.
"You two look like you're up to something," he said, looking up from his book.
"Yeah," Dee said. "We're gonna leave."
"Hm. I've been thinking about that, myself. So you're just going to run around until you die or something?"
"Yeah. That, or until we decide we'd rather do something else. We figure, this really can't go on forever. I mean, we've made our stand, but even if we tried to restart civilization, I don't think any babies we have would really have immune systems strong enough to fight off the parasite. And besides, what the Hell kind of world is this to raise kids in, anyway?"
"I was kind of thinking the same thing. Didn't wanna say anything, though. I didn't think it would help."
"Yeah," Sam agreed.
"Anyway, we're taking off after we say goodbye to everyone. You might wanna go up to the roof and say goodbye to Jack, too. He's planning on killing himself at sunrise."
"Huh. Poetic. Hella timing, too."
"Why'zat," Dee asked.
"Well," Seamus said, looking at his watch, "In about twenty minutes, it's gonna be the Fourth of July."
"Oh. That's neat." Dee nodded her head in solemn contemplation. A statment, indeed. "I hadn't been keeping track."
Seamus headed up to the roof, and the girls made their rounds. The others were fairly unsurprised to hear of their departure; most expressed the desire to leave themselves, but simply hadn't worked up the gumption, while others reflected that others would probably start following suit. Bill said he was going to try to stick it out to the bitter end, but he wished them well on their journey. Then they returned to the roof to find Seamus having a last cigarette with Jack.
"He tell you when we're heading out," Dee asked.
"Yeah," Jack replied. "He said you were going tonight. He also told me that it just now turned July Fourth. I actually think that's kind of cheesy, but just a coincidence. Not like I planned it or anything."
"Heh, right. Well, it's basically up to you, now. You wanna wait for sunrise, or you wanna watch it from the tower?"
"Yeah, a radio tower sounds good. Let's wait a few hours. I'd like to watch it from the top, but I don't want to have to wait too long."
"Sure thing. It'll take you a while to climb it, though."
"Yeah, I figured that."
About four AM, the three of them headed out in the black truck, loaded with some tools, water and a few days' food. Jack rode in the bed, the wind running through his hair. They arrived at a radio tower in the center of town, and broke through the fence surrounding it. Jack was dropped off at its base, and when he started going up the ladder, he turned to say goodbye.
"Have a good life, you two."
"Have a good death, Jack," Dee responded. "We'll miss you."
"Yeah. I miss living. I have for a while now."
"I know what you mean," Sam called from the cab. The zombies were getting nearer the truck.
"Love to stay and watch," Dee said, "But I don't think Zed's gonna tolerate our presence too much longer. I don't wanna get caught in the mob. I hope your climb goes well!"
"Thanks. So do I." He started climbing as Dee pulled the truck around to leave the fenced enclosure surrounding the tower. "Hey," he shouted after them. The truck stopped. "If there just so happens to be an afterlife, I'm giving God a piece of my mind, and then I'm gonna track you two down. So, uhh, don't do anything stupid and wind up in the wrong monotheistic afterlife region, OK?"
"Sure thing," Dee shouted back with a laugh. "We'll look for you, too. Don't be a stranger!"
"Right!" With that, Jack resumed his climb up the ladder, and the truck drove off into the distance.
Jack August realized during his climb that radio towers are a lot taller than they seem when you look at them from a ways off. He had to stop a couple times, despite the fact that he was in the best shape of his life due to the fitness regimen of the past few weeks. Once at the top, he stepped off onto the grate and braced himself against the railing surrounding the walkway. Jesus, but it was windy up here. He could see for a long damn way, too.
After a few minutes, the sky began to grow pale in the East. Jack took in every minute of it, savoring the colors as they developed, relishing the feel of the wind against his body, the sensation of freedom this high up, even enjoying the dizziness he knew he was feeling for the last time. The Sun burst over the horizon, bathing the land beneath him in light and warmth. Jack closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling on his skin. He waited a few moments to mentally prepare himself one last time.
Finally, the Sun fully over the horizon, Jack figured it was time. He maneuvered himself carefully around the railing, not wanting to hit the tower all the way down, and was almost overcome by vertigo as the empty space beneath him threatened to swallow him up before he was ready. He smiled, shook out his shoulders as best he could while holding onto the railing, then jumped away from the tower with all his strength.
His eyes were open the whole way down.
The drive North was quiet, serene. The women took a route that went almost straight up into Wisconsin, bypassing Chicago and the suburbs, where there were likely to be tangled knots of traffic. Dee and Sam didn't see a single moving vehicle the whole way up. The two towns they passed through on the way showed no signs of life, only the dispersed zombies. With no reason to travel slowly, Dee kept the truck at a steady eighty-five. As they got further from each town, they noticed that the zombies thinned out in the rural areas.
At some point, Sam noticed a blackened crater off to their left, in the middle of an open field. She pointed it out to Dee, who had been keeping her eyes on the road the whole time.
"Huh. What do you suppose that is?"
"Dunno," Sam answered. "You wanna go check it out?"
"Hmm." Dee considered this for a moment as she took her foot off the gas. "Sure, why not? Zed's pretty thin out here." She slowed the truck to twenty and took it off the road, looping back around to the crater. Pulling up to the mess, they saw a piled wreckage of something in the middle, with scraps of whatever it was scattered about. The closest zombies were a hundred yards off, so they got out of the truck.
"Shit. What do you make of it," Sam asked.
"Dunno," Dee said, poking at bits with her crowbar. She looked around, then up at the sky. Sam wandered about the crater, examining the shrapnel. Dee resumed prodding at the mess in the center. "Holy shit."
"What is it?" Sam turned to what Dee was looking at, a chunk of something embedded in the ground. It looked vaguely grid-like, but whatever impact there had been had severely warped it. Dee's crowbar was pushing chunks of blackened stuff around which made a tinkling noise, like glass.
"These bits - they're ceramic. I think - I think this might be part of a solar panel. There's not much of it left, but - son of a bitch, I think this might be a satellite."
"Get outta town. Wouldn't a satellite vaporize before it hit the ground?"
"Mostly, maybe. Eh, probably. But not if it was big enough. Especially the ceramics and whatnot. I don't know how they're constructed, really, whether it's to burn off during reentry or to survive it, but - yeah, I can't think of what else this might be."
"Aren't most satellites around the equator, though? How would it get this far North, do you think?"
"Well," Dee mused, "If something else bumped it, then it could have fallen out of orbit. If it was just winged, it could have wound up pretty much anywhere. But - I don't know. Maybe I'm just making this up. But I think that whatever bombed all the power stations, whatever delivered the parasite, I think it did this, too." Sam paused to think for a few moments before responding.
"So, if aliens are attacking, then where are they?"
"Probably waiting for us all to die off."
"I dunno. I mean, I can't think of anything else, but - Jesus, it just seems so far-fetched. You really think whatever did this - you think it came from space?"
"I can't think of anything else, at the moment. And - well, I mean - dammit, I don't know if I'm losing it or what. But it seems right. I can't get my head around it."
The zombies were getting within a few dozen feet of them now, so they got back in the truck and headed off. The rest of the drive passed fairly uneventfully.
Tom Morrigan lived with his second wife, Linda, in a fairly rural town close to the Illinois-Wisconsin border. They had moved there after Tom's entire department at the University of Chicago had been axed due to budget cuts. Until the blackout, he had worked in instructional design for a motor company who happened to need almost exactly the skills he had used years before at Yamaha, and his experience with the university's media department was beyond reproach. The only other applicant was a quarter-century Tom's junior, and had a fancy degree or two that Tom lacked, but was a bit "modern" for the company's traditional tastes. On his new salary, he and Linda were able to make a down payment on a house that was nearly twice the size of their old residence in the Chicago suburbs. As Dee pulled up into the driveway, she realized that she could probably count the number of times she had been there on one hand - just holidays, which she alternated between here and Sam's parents, who still lived near Chicago. The two of them had agreed that the city meant certain death, and if they decided to go in there, it would be their last stop.
Zed had only a token presence in town, with most of the zombies spread out among the fungus-ridden fields. Dee saw that all the windows of the house were boarded and assumed that the doors would be barricaded, too. She tried to stop herself from hoping that her parents were alive. She went around to the West side of the house to climb the antenna tower to the second-story window - those on the front had not been boarded up, and she guessed that they wouldn't be in back, either. Keeping her center of gravity close to her, she advised Sam to do the same.
"Y'know, Rosie," Dee said, reaching her leg out to the roof below the window she planned to enter, "I told my dad when I helped him move in that this house wasn't ninja-proof. All it takes is one asshole to climb this antenna tower - or, as I call it, a 'ladder' - and bam, all your samurai are dead."
"Whatever," Sam said, laughing. "It doesn't matter whether your house is ninja-proof or not. What you need to worry about are the pirates, and there's no proofing against them."
"What about cowboys?"
"No, dammit! The Pirate-Ninja-Cowboy pantheon is a hierarchy, not a triangle like Rock-Paper-Scissors. We've been over this before."
"Sure, sure." Dee tried a window; locked. She forced it up with her crowbar, not wanting to deal with broken glass.
Inside, things smelled awful. The air was still and stagnant, and Dee abandoned both worries about squatters, and hope for her parents. This was the smell of death. She went immediately across the landing at the top of the stairs to their bedroom and stared in shock at the scene before her.
Sam joined her shortly, and immediately reached for Dee's hand at the sight of Tom and Linda, dead in each other's arms in bed. At Sam's touch, Dee began to tremble, and then broke into sobs as she fell to her knees.
"They were - fucking - shit! They were safe! They could have held out! What the fuck?!" Tears streamed from her eyes, and her shoulders heaved as Sam began to weep with her, arms around her lover. "God-fucking-dammit! Why couldn't they - wait, or go somewhere, do fucking something - anything! Why this? Why like this?!"
"I don't know, honey. I don't know. But - they were good people, OK? Just - just let it all out. It's - it's not OK, I know, but - but that's OK. They lived their lives, they saw you grow up, and they made their decision."
"But I - son of a bitch! I never - I wanted to say goodbye! Why didn't they say goodbye?!"
"I don't know, baby."
"What the fuck?! This - this isn't - fucking - it's not -" Dee just shouted into the air, unable to finish the thought.
"I don't know, baby. But I know Tom, and I know Linda. They were good people, and you know that. They knew what they were doing. Whatever they did, there was a reason, OK? And - I mean, maybe - maybe if we look around, we can find something, OK?"
Dee moved from her knees to a sitting position, leaned against the door. She and Sam cried together for a few minutes, and then Dee started trying to compose herself. After a couple false starts, they held each other for a while, and then got to their feet together.
"You're - you're probably right. They probably did something, left something behind. You're right. We should look around." Wiping at her eyes, she made for the stairway. She used her Zippo to look around downstairs - there wasn't much light that got in around the boarded windows, but she found a flashlight in the basement and started looking around. The generator was hooked up, but other than that, the house looked normal, and Dee couldn't find anything out of place or looking even vaguely clue-like.
Back upstairs, she found the empty tequila and beer bottles that she presumed Tom and Linda drank before heading to bed for the last time. She hoped that the liquor wasn't what brought them to do it - then crushed the thought, for the scene showed far too many signs of premeditation. They were in each other's arms, in bed, the bottle of sleeping pills on the nightstand, and - shit, she hadn't noticed it at the time, but the remote had been on the nightstand. They usually kept it next to the TV itself. She went back into their bedroom, Sam right behind her, and crossed the room to get to the other side of the bed.
Dee nearly tripped over the box of videotapes. Most of them were dated from when she had lived in California, and beneath them were stacks of paper and various black binders.
On the nightstand, on top of the alarm clock, was a note written in Tom's inimitable scrawl. It took some concentration, but Dee was eventually able to decipher it. It was short and to the point:
Dee -
We're so sorry, honey.
You were right.
Love, Dad and Linda

Rendezvous: Chapter 16

Chapter 16
A group meeting quickly assembled to discuss this new development. Those who hadn’t heard the zombie speaking in his cage were given the chance to listen with their own ears. After the facts of the matter were laid out, a heated discussion ensued regarding the ethics of the situation.
“If the infected people are still aware enough to speak,” Hank began, “I think it’s not too far of a stretch to imagine that they’re still aware of the world, if only dimly.”
“That’s always been the case,” Seamus said matter-of-factly. “In order to find and capture their prey, the zombies have to be somewhat aware. I don’t see how this changes anything.”
“Well, typically,” Cameron began, “Hollywood zombies have always been the walking dead. These, as we have seen, are more like the ‘nzumbe’ from the voudoun traditions. They’re still alive, not reanimated corpses.”
“Precisely,” Hank said. “And because of that, I think it’s safe to say that whatever the parasite does, it changes the person, and doesn’t replace or remove them. What I mean is that it’s still the person in there, and not a zombie in the philosophical sense.”
“So you’re saying souls exist,” Dee scoffed.
“No,” Hank replied, “I’m saying that, if Shep here - I’m gonna start calling him Shep - if Shep got infected, Shep is still in there. Changed radically, yes, but still a person and not just a meat puppet.”
“I still don’t see why this puts them on a par with us, morally speaking.” Seamus’ arms were folded across his chest.
“I’m saying that we don’t know enough,” Hank said, running his hands through his hair.
“We’ll never know enough, Hank,” Dee said. “We can’t. This is just the reverse of the philosophical zombie problem. Instead of wondering whether those who act like us also have first-person experiences the way we do, we’re just trying to work out whether those who look like they might not be like us still have the first-person experiences they probably used to have.”
“Exactly,” Seamus continued. “And since this is a matter of life and - well, whatever you want to call it, in thrall to the parasite - since that’s what’s at stake and they’re the aggressors, I say this puts us in the clear for putting them out of their misery.”
“How do you know they’re miserable,” Hank asked.
“Fucking whatever,” Seamus replied. “Bad word choice. I don’t care. If these guys are going to try to make me like them, I don’t want them to, and if they can’t be reasoned with, then I’m going to use force.”
“Why not just coexist?” Hank was getting animated now. “We can keep them at bay indefinitely, it seems. Why not just live and let live?”
“For one thing,” Dee responded, “I think letting the winter cold get to them is much less humane than shooting them in the head.”
“We don’t shoot them in the head most of the time,” Mary spoke up. “We bleach them. We burn them. Sometimes we beat them. Hypothermia and frostbite don’t sound so bad next to those, given their unusually high tolerance for pain.”
“Look, this is all beside the point,” Seamus said. “The way I see it, this parasite is a threat, and we’re dealing with it the only way we can.”
“No, we’re not,” Hank countered. “We rarely deal with the parasite directly, and even then only to stop it encroaching on our territory. Most of our efforts are concentrated on the human hosts. You don’t cure a cold by killing everybody who’s got one.”
Seamus sighed in frustration. “Look, even if you want to argue that these people are merely sick, but still fundamentally persons with moral worth, that doesn’t excuse the fact that they’re attacking us. Either they don’t have moral worth and it’s OK to kill them, or they do have moral worth and thus moral responsibility, and we’re justified in defending ourselves.”
“I think that’s a false dilemma,” Hank said after a moment’s consideration. “They could simply be mad - not in control of their actions, unable to take responsibility, but still possessing moral worth. I mean, come on, ‘Find them, get them, make them like me?’ Does that sound like something a person would say?”
“No,” Cameron chimed in. “It sounds like what a zombie would say if you gave it a voice.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Seamus said. “And since there’s no way to reverse the infection, at least not at this point, then I don’t really see the point in altering our current course of action.”
“I think this is a reason to look harder for a cure, actually,” Hank replied. “If we stop killing the zombies whenever they’re not an immediate threat, that’s more people we can potentially save.”
“I disagree,” Dee said. “The damage done to the brain is, as far as we can tell, irreparable. We’ve been able to stave off infection so far, and might be able to do it indefinitely, but I think it’s overwhelmingly probable that there’s no way to cure it.”
“I’m with Dee and Seamus on this one,” Sam said. “I mean, maybe with fifty more years of neurological research and state-of-the-art equipment, we might be able to develop some kind of therapy program. But the way things are now, even if some kind of cure is logically possible, it’s definitely beyond our reach. We have neither the knowledge nor the means to work on these brain problems.”
“I don’t think we should give up so easily,” Mary said. “I mean, the human mind is a pretty malleable thing, right? What if it just takes time for the damage to heal?”
Others started voicing agreement that if the hosts of the parasite were indeed still “human” in any way, then every reasonable effort should be taken to save them.
“Hold up a second,” Sam said, quieting the crowd. “Look, the human brain is not some sacrosanct magical thing, like some of you seem to believe. It’s actually very like a machine - an extraordinarily sophisticated machine, but a machine nonetheless. Has anyone ever heard of Phineas Gage?” Dee, Seamus, and Cameron had all heard the story from Sam, but half-heartedly raised their hands anyway. Nobody else did. “He’s the subject of one of the first and also most fascinating case studies in mind-related fields of study.
“Phineas Gage was a railroad worker. He was described by his coworkers and superiors as conscientious, responsible, even-tempered, an all-around stand-up guy. But one day, there was an accident, and a metal rod was driven into his head by an explosion. He recovered, but was never quite the same. After the accident, he became irritable, irresponsible, and lazy. He had to be fired. His friends said that he had changed, that he was hardly recognizable as the person he once was. His skull was kept in a museum or something, and years later, doctors examined it and found that the areas of the brain that the metal rod had passed through were those that had been found in other studies to be responsible for decision-making processes and mood regulation. The change to his brain had changed him.
“There are other cases where it’s been shown that the brain functions very mechanically. There’s a condition known as ‘pain asymbolia,’ which can be brought about deliberately and is sometimes used to treat patients in chronic pain that can’t be easily medicated or otherwise alleviated. Those who undergo this process just about universally describe the sensation in the same way: they say that the pain is the same, but they feel much better after their operation.
“Then there’s Capgras’ syndrome,” she continued, the crowd remaining attentive to her lecture. “This is where victims of head trauma have suffered a disconnection between the visual and emotional centers of the brain. What happens is that they will be able to recognize the face of a close friend or loved one, but since the connection to the limbic system has been lost, they don’t get the emotional reaction to the sight of the face, and they end up believing that the friend or loved one has been replaced by a doppelganger. People who have this condition can have the syndrome described and explained to them, and can listen to and understand all kinds of compelling arguments meant to convince them otherwise, but they are consistently unable to change their minds about the matter. The feeling that the other person is an impostor is so overwhelmingly compelling that they simply cannot be talked out of it.
“The point of all this,” Sam concluded with a sigh, “Is that the brain, while incredibly complex, is still a kind of machine that is ultimately beyond our control or understanding - at least at this point in time. If this parasite warps the minds of its hosts so that they’re driven by this single-minded urge to turn others, and reduces them to vegetables when it’s removed, then it’s more than likely the case that the changes it causes are not chemically induced - in which case the removal of the chemicals from the host’s system would probably cure the condition - but physical in nature, and cannot be fixed.”
The crowd was silent for a while, trying to comprehend what had just been laid before them. It was a lot to swallow. Many of them believed in the soul or something like it, and if asked, would have probably said that they thought a person’s personality - or however you want to describe what makes a person who they are - was a mysterious something-or-other that could only be described in quasi-mystical terms and oversaw the operation of the brain as a human oversees the operation of a computer. While not entirely familiar with the ins and outs of every causal event going on within the mysterious box, the “user” was, so they assumed, somehow able in principle to overcome any difficulties arising from “the machinery.” Except for Dee, Sam, Seamus, and Cameron, most of them were entirely unfamiliar with the myriad arguments and studies from the fields of philosophy, psychology, and neurology which seemed to lead to the inevitable conclusion that “the mind” is simply what the brain does. The idea that changes to people’s brains would result in fundamental changes to those people themselves was a foreign idea to which many of them were highly resistant.
“Look,” Dee said at last, “I know this is some heavy shit, OK? The fact that the hosts are able to articulate their state of mind, such as it is, is scientifically fascinating but emotionally disturbing. It puts a face on them that makes it harder to regard them as enemies, I know. But they’re still zombies, in a conventional, ‘close enough to count’ sense. They’re not exactly like Hollywood zombies, but few things are depicted in Hollywood with the same degree of complexity they have in real life. Just like Seamus said at the start of this conversation, this doesn’t change anything. The people out there in the parking lot are simply not the people they were before infection, and as far as we can tell, they live to turn us. From what we’ve seen of them, they don’t show any signs of what we would call a human way of life. For all intents and purposes, they are not human.”
“Dee, listen to me,” Hank said. “What you’re saying right now - and I’m not just saying this to play Devil’s advocate - but it sounds a lot like the ‘othering’ that goes on in any armed conflict. My concern is that we’re dehumanizing the infected unnecessarily.”
“And what if that worry is groundless,” Seamus asked.
“Well - look, I’m not going to lie. Staking our ethics on one course of action and then being wrong is going to be awful, either way. We could turn out to be mass-murdering innocent people, or we could wind up like them and be left to a truly miserable and inhuman fate. I don’t know.”
“How much information do you need to answer that question?” Seamus was pressing the attack now. “How much do you need to know to settle the issue in your mind?”
“I don’t know.”
“And what’s getting in the way of that? What can you find out to help you figure out what questions need to be answered, so we have an idea of the problem we’re solving?”
“I - I don’t know.”
“Then why should we change our course of action? This is surely cause to pause for thought, but we’ve all done that, and then some. And it will surely come up in the future. But can you really recommend any other course of action to us, with so much unknown?”
“Now, hold on - that’s all very pragmatic, but what I’m concerned with here is what’s right, morally speaking.”
“I’m concerned with staying alive,” Seamus said, eyes narrowed.
“But at what cost?” Hank’s arms were spread wide. “Is it really worth it to survive like this? Is this really how we want to live?”
“No,” Dee interjected. “I don’t think any of us prefer living like this. But we can’t go back to how things were, and like Seamus, I plan to cling to this mortal coil for as long as I can. If some morally hairy issues crop up, that’s a pity, but I don’t plan on letting them get in my way.” Sam stepped close to Dee and took her arm. Despite the resolute stoicism that Dee and Seamus were unapologetically displaying, the crowd was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the concerns that Hank was raising - concerns which they all shared.
At Sam’s touch, Dee became aware of her own agitated state. Her heart rate had elevated considerably, and she felt a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach. This, she thought, was the immensity that had been approaching in her dreams these past weeks: the horrifying, implacable, inevitable futility of it all. Hank’s words stuck in her head - Is it really worth it to survive like this? Some things, she had reasoned before the blackout, were not worth surviving - even if you made it through physically intact, the emotional toll could, in principle, be too great to justify a continued existence. Was this one of those situations? Were they really “surviving” the zombie apocalypse, or were they simply succumbing to a slower death from the inside out? She knew how to stay alive - that was the easy question - but what was the right way to go about things in a world gone wrong?
All this passed through her head in a flash, an intuitive realization that washed over her like a wave. Her words had silenced the crowd temporarily, and before anyone could think of anything to say in response, she said under her breath, “This is the way the world ends.”
Jack finished the line, his voice solemn: “Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

Rendezvous: Chapter 15

Weeks passed.
Working together, the group was able to jury-rig crude electrical and plumbing systems for the building. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked, and that was the point. The zombies returned, but the fortifications held strong. It appeared that the zombies would revert from “attack” to “shamble” in six to eight hours, provided that nothing came up to renew their interest.
Fitness and learning programs were quickly instituted to keep the group occupied and in shape. There was a dojo, a track, a weight program, an armory, and a library - sections of the store arbitrarily labeled to give a sense of order. Those who chose to take initiative were able to impart their knowledge and skills to others, and the group’s mood and survivability began improving in tandem.
Morale dropped as it was discovered that antibiotics only had temporary effects upon the parasite. Within days, the experimental groups showed growth as rapid as the controls. All the other over-the-counter medications found in the store were similarly ineffective. Alcohol did nothing, except in concentrations that would also be lethal inside the human body. Aside from the bleach bomb (a water balloon filled with a 10% bleach solution), nothing worked against the zombies that wouldn't also kill humans.
There seemed to be no way to reverse the infection once it had taken root, either. After constructing a cage, several zombies were captured in succession to try to undo whatever it was the parasite did. Every subject showed the same results: if the method of removing the parasite was not itself lethal, the host was left brain-dead, exactly as Cameron had guessed. They wouldn't eat on their own, they wouldn't swallow on their own, they would soil themselves periodically, and they had no response to any stimulus except for intense pain. The subjects who survived the removal of the parasite were kept alive for long-term observation, in the hope that they might show some kind of improvement.
The rooftop garden began to grow black fungus within days. They tried burning it off, which worked, but once the first sprouts came up, there seemed to be no way to get rid of the parasite without also destroying their food. Still, they waited for the plants to grow - with any luck, the parasite was around but not inside the plants, and maybe they could cook it off or neutralize it chemically before eating it. Canning and jarring would be a different matter entirely, though.
In mid-June, the tomatoes were ready. There seemed to be no interference from the fungus - it was everywhere, but it didn't choke out the other plants. Dee had been keeping a close eye on their growth, and the tomatoes were first to come up. She didn't know what to make of it; to all appearances, the tomatoes were ripe and healthy. Dee pulled one from the vine, and cursed as the outer part of the fruit came away, revealing a thick black root ball where the core of the tomato should have been.
“What’s the matter,” Kevin asked, walking over from his post on the rooftop.
“Fucking look!” Kevin observed the tangled, hair-like roots growing where he was fairly certain a tomato ought to be. Seeing the lump of tomato in Dee’s hand, he took it from her and inspected it.
“Well, it looks like this part’s fine.”
“Still probably contaminated, though.”
“Yeah, well, if you fry or boil it, it should be OK.” Dee grumbled and took a couple deep breaths.
“You’re probably right. Still - this shit is everywhere. I mean, even if that works, we’ll only be able to eat tomatoes, peppers, and other things where the core’s separate. Pumpkins, apples and oranges, carrots, potatoes - it’s gonna be all the way through those things.” She stooped down to take a closer look at the black roots. “What the fuck,” she spat more than asked.
“I guess we’ll just have to do what we can. Maybe we can grow some vegetables hydroponically during the winter.”
“Maybe. Maybe. I doubt it, though. If this thing can survive as a lichen, and the spores are in the air, it could stick around.”
“At least the zombies won’t be able to survive the snow.”
“That’s true.” No matter how much discomfort Zed was able to ignore, water in the host cells would crystallize and burst the cell walls, causing frostbite and thus tissue death. Since the parasite needed a host that was alive, if only barely, there was no way the zombies could hold out during the winter without migrating, and they probably couldn’t do that fast enough, anyway.
Dee gathered everyone up on the roof to share the news.
“So what now,” Seamus asked after she was done.
“Well, we ought to do the universal edibility test,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You gradually introduce the substance to your body a little bit at a time to see if anything bad happens. If not, then it’s OK to eat. I think it goes, ‘rub some on the forearm, wait eight hours; rub some on the neck, wait eight hours; touch your tongue to it, wait eight hours; eat a nibble, wait twenty-four hours; eat a handful, wait twenty-four hours.’ If you feel fine, aside from the hunger, then it’s probably OK to eat. I might be wrong on the time intervals, though; I haven’t read up lately.”
“Why are we even bothering with that,” Cameron asked. “If we can’t grow food, then we’re doomed anyway. What’s the point in seeing if the only thing we can do is safe, if it’s the only thing we can do?”
“Well,” Kevin said, “I think if we can’t grow food in the open, we should build clean rooms and grow it hydroponically.”
“Oh.” Cameron shrugged. “Pain in the ass, but I guess that would work.”
“Exactly,” Dee said. “So - any volunteers?”
Dee, Jill, Sam, Kevin, and three of the Wal-Mart employees all volunteered. After deciding that they could only spare three people, they drew straws to see who would participate - Jill, Kevin, and Jim got the short straws. They would spend most of the time in their own individual cages, and would only be let out under supervision in order to cook their food or use the bathroom. For the first test, they would boil the tomatoes. Three days later, none of them had turned, so Dee, Sam, and Cameron decided to try them fried; again, it looked safe. Next, the first group cooked them in brandy, and once again, there were no adverse effects. The group began to dine on stews and soups, saving their canned and jarred goods for the winter.
The main problem with surviving a zombie apocalypse, it turned out, is that it takes a long time and is very boring. It's dangerous to go anywhere or do anything, and living strictly for survival loses its rustic charm rather rapidly. The activities that had been set up to keep everyone occupied, as well as all the chores that needed to be done, ensured that cabin fever would not set in; however, the situation took its toll just the same.
The parasite eventually covered the walls. They decided that it was a waste of bleach to keep pouring it down the walls when the lichen would just grow back up anyway, so they restricted themselves to keeping the roof and the store's interior clean. All wounds that broke the skin were doused in alcohol, bandaged with alcohol-soaked dressings, and checked daily for signs of infection. Everyone smoked at least one cigarette a day, and drank at least one shot of hard liquor a night. Plans were not made to raid the surrounding grocery stores for their canned and jarred goods - that could wait until winter, and was an unnecessary risk. However, the hospitals were a different story. Every couple of days, items were added to or subtracted from the "shopping list," and the plan was refined. Coming up with it was no small problem, but they decided to take their time and plan for as many contingencies as they could, and also give themselves time to prepare their bodies and minds for the trip.
For her part, Dee was able to keep her act together - but her thoughts were a different story. Every day, it seemed, she was creating new false memories for herself, inventing subtle details or filling in explanations that she could not possibly know, and it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to separate what she had actually experienced from her flights of fancy. Her dreams were becoming more specific, more focused, and increasingly disturbing. With effort, though, she was able to hide her problems from everyone else. Tending the garden kept her grounded in reality, distracted her from her delusions, and was relaxing to boot.
One rainy day, Dee was smoking on the roof, watching Zed through binoculars from under an umbrella. Cameron's voice squawked over the walkie-talkie from downstairs.
"Dee, you there?"
"Uh, yeah. What's up?"
"You, umm - you really ought to come take a look at this."
"Why? What happened?"
"One of the zombies we captured is talking."
"I'll be down in a few minutes."
"OK. Umm - hurry."
"What, has he got a train to catch or something? I'm on my way." She stood up and headed down the rope ladder to the shipping area where they kept the zombie pens, still smoking. "So what have we got here?"
"Just listen for a sec," Cameron said. Almost everyone was crowded around the cage, the solitary zombie inside struggling in vain to get at them. His moaning was inarticulate at first, but the more Dee listened to him, the more it sounded like speech. He was repeating the same set of monosyllabic grunts:
"Fuhh - umm - guhh - umm -"
"What are we supposed to be hearing here," Dee asked.
"Just listen a sec," Cameron said.
"Muhh - umm - luhh - muhh."
Dee kept listening. There was definitely a pattern to his grunts.
"Fuhh umm - guhh umm - muhh umm - luhh muhh."
And then again:
"Fuhh umm - guhh umm - muhh umm - luhh muhh."
The zombie kept repeating his mantra, and the more she listened, the more sense she could make of it. She was picking up on subtle accents in the utterings, little hints that made it seem more like language than random ravings.
"Fuhn ehm - geh ehm - meh ehm - luhh meh."
"That's - Christ, is he talking about us?"
"I think so."
"Fuhn em. Geh em. Meh em. Luhh meh."
Dee's jaw hung limp, and her cigarette fell from her mouth.
Find them. Get them. Make them like me.