Dead World | Novel | Dead Zero Read online

  “This is your chance to step up, son. All the things you backed away from in the past — none of it matters if you have the balls to do the right thing now.”

  “Oh, for … Okay. What’s the right thing, Dad? Why don’t you clue me in?”

  “Maybe start with facing what’s really happening here.”

  “Which is zombies,” Thom said in his let-me-just-get-this-straight voice.

  “Ambulatory corpses.” Rick offered the group a nod. “Call them whatever you want.”

  “Zombies aren’t real. Nothing you talk about is real. It’s all bullshit, Dad. You’re living a goddamn fantasy!”

  “Thom …”

  “He won’t face it, Carly! He can’t stand the thought of getting old. I don’t know what’s more tiresome, Dad — your illness, which you can’t help but which you have whether you want to admit it or not, or the idiotic things you say when you’re feeling just fine.”

  “Such as?”

  “Do you know the difference between movies and reality? Do you really think there’s a monster in your closet, or is that just you being nuts like usual?”

  “Thom!”

  He turned on her. “Make up your mind, Carly! Is he a doddering old man who can’t help himself or is he a fully functional, fully coherent ex-Marine who does and says what he wants with full awareness of how fucked up it all is? He can’t have it both ways!”

  “He’s not …” She glanced at Rick, and Thom knew she was trying not to talk behind his back while he stood right in front of them. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Maybe it’s you, Thomas,” Rick said.

  “Me?”

  “Maybe you’re the one who can’t think straight. You just watched a bunch of people going totally batshit, and I heard Carly tell you about the guy who was shot in the heart, then got back up and came after you. If you don’t like the word ‘zombie,’ use something else. But you’re stupid if you keep refusing to see what this is.”

  “THIS! IS NOT! A MOVIE!”

  Rick’s jaw rocked slowly back and forth, his eyes never leaving Thom’s. He was either looking for the perfect response or an ideal insult. But instead he spoke in his calmest voice. “Tensions are high, I get it. But we’ve still got something we need to do here.”

  “What, build a bunker? Board our windows?”

  Rick glared at his son. “Find Rosie.”

  And Thom was instantly humbled.

  Because despite his determination to keep Rosie in mind, he had of course entirely forgotten.

  Eleven

  Not Like Detectives

  Thom wanted to re-trace Brendan’s steps right away and return to the lower-level exit. That’s where he said he’d seen Rosie, so that’s where they’d need to start.

  But the unresolved thing in Thom’s mind returned immediately after Rick pitched the same idea: Brendan saying “I saw Rosie” instead of “I see Rosie.”

  He’d reported an observation, not a rendezvous.

  In past, not present, tense.

  That had bugged Thom when he’d heard it, but then the mayhem exploded, and they’d had all of that haunted-house creeping around with his heart lurching up into his throat the whole time, all the blood and death and things Rick kept stubbornly calling zombies. The incongruity of his son’s report was front-and-center again, soon as a temporary peace descended and they started to walk.

  “I tried to get to her, Grandpa.” Because with the divide in their group, Brendan was speaking more to his grandfather than Thom. “But all these people kept coming out, and the doors, there’s like ten of them lined up. I was way at one end and she came out of the last or next-to-last door, so I tried to get through the crowd to her, but … Well, people were really freaking out. And kind of trampling anyone who got in their way. I actually got close enough to yell her name, but there was a big group of frat-boy guys shoving their way between us and I thought if she heard and started to come toward me, they’d just push her down.”

  “That was smart,” Rick said.

  And Brendan beamed.

  Thom actually thought the same, but he wasn’t about to say it now.

  “I kept an eye on her. She was just kind of standing there confused, so I thought if I let them pass …”

  “It’s okay,” said Thom. “You did fine.”

  Rick shot Thom a look. To Brendan he said, “Then what happened?”

  “More people came out. A lot of them. Like, a ton! And Grandpa? Dad?” he said, tossing Thom a bone. “They weren’t all …” He shrugged. “You know.”

  “There were zombies in with them?”

  “Goddammit, Dad,” said Thom, but nobody seemed to hear him.

  Brendan nodded. “A lot of shouting and people running everywhere, some of them even into each other. One of them saw me and started coming right after me.”

  Carly gasped and put a hand over her mouth.

  “It was that woman from earlier, Dad. The lady with all the curls. She …” Brendan drew a breath as if to fortify himself. “Remember how you thought that guy got her with the axe right after we went to get the guards? He must have. She had this big ‘ol gash right here …” He drew a vertical line down the center of his chest. “And there was …” A small but involuntary recoil. “I think there was bone sticking out and all this gross stuff kind of dripping from … I could see inside her.”

  “You have to kill the brain,” Rick said. “Otherwise they get right back up.”

  “You don’t know that.” Carly turned to her son and added, “He doesn’t know that.”

  Rick seemed to consider a rebuttal, but then seemed to decide that peace — for the sake of finding his girlfriend — mattered more. “Did you see where Rosie went?”

  Brendan nodded, half-ashamed. “Yeah. There were a bunch of those cops with these weird silver guns. They were waving people over as they came out of the mall.”

  “Silver guns?” Rick asked.

  “Go on, Brendan,” Carly prompted.

  “What cops? Who carries silver guns?”

  “It’s not important,” she told Rick.

  “Service pistols are almost always black. I think Bakersfield PD carries a Glock 22. It’s—”

  “Not important,” Carly said again.

  “Wait,” Thom said. “I saw something like that earlier. Did the guns have belled ends?”

  Brendan nodded.

  “Belled ends?” Rick said.

  “Rick,” Carly said. Meaning: Stop interrupting.

  “No, no, that means something,” Thom said, reluctant to agree with his father. “I saw two people running through the Macy’s looking like Men in Black. Suits and ties, but they didn’t seem like detectives.”

  “But the weapons …” Rick said.

  “They looked like muskets. And …” His mind replayed the thing’s firing, the way it had whistled instead of banged, and how instead of making a hole in its target, it’d lifted an entire clothing rack in the air and twisted the thing like a pretzel. “And I wouldn’t want to be in front of one when someone pulled the trigger.”

  “What happened after the cops rounded people up?” Carly asked.

  “Dunno. People didn’t stop coming out, and there were more and more of those crazy people in with them.”

  “Zombies,” Rick clarified.

  “I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t even see her after a while!” Brendan looked like he might be starting to lose control. All their recent trauma combined with his own failed task hitting him at once, and a sweet woman’s whereabouts unknown — because of him, he seemed to feel. “I think they took them. Back the way we came, Dad. Like behind the Halloween Store?”

  The Halloween Store. Another forgotten oddity came into his mind. “You mean where all those Hemisphere vans were?”

  Brendan nodded.

  “What vans?” Rick asked.

  “We saw a group of vans when we came around the mall,” Thom explained. “All by themselves in a small lot behind the old JC Pen
ney. They had Hemisphere written on the side. They—”

  But Rick was already running.

  Twelve

  Hemisphere

  The old man had no trace of his ancient injuries.

  No arthritis, no stiff joints, no being-68-years-old at all.

  Trying to keep pace and failing, Thom got the distinct sense of having traveled back in time. He wasn’t chasing his elderly, resident-home father. Instead, he was in pursuit of the hulking Marine Rick had once been — twenty-five years old at most, and aching for action.

  By the time Thom caught up with him, huffing and puffing, Rick’s breath was mostly back to normal. They stood side-by-side at the edge of the utility lot, and only after finding it empty did Thom remember he’d left his charges behind.

  “Is this where you saw them?” Rick asked.

  Thom nodded so he’d have another second to find his breath. “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. We’ve pretty much made the whole circuit now. This is the only lot like this.”

  Rick moved forward as Brendan and Carly reached the slope behind them and started scrambling up. Carly wasn’t as fast as she usually was with her injury, but Brendan was clearly being the dutiful son, staying with her instead of rushing ahead like Thom had.

  At first, still caught in the delusion of his father as Young-Rick-from-the-past, Thom half-thought he planned to kneel and scan the ground for signs like a Native American tracker. Instead, he reached the spot where the vans had been parked, made a slow rotation, then came halfway back. He heard Carly huffing and puffing up the slope and waved Thom forward.

  “Look. I know you don’t like me much right now.”

  “Right now,” Thom echoed.

  “But before they get up here, there’s something you need to understand.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s about Carly.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I think you already know.”

  Thom looked back. He honestly didn’t.

  “Her injury,” Rick said.

  “What about it?”

  “She was bitten.”

  “Okay. And?” Then he understood. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Dad.”

  “Listen. This is important. I know you don’t believe me.”

  “No, Dad, I don’t.”

  “And when I say how I know what I’m about to tell you, you’re going to believe me even less.”

  “Then why tell me, Dad.” He said it like a proof’s conclusion, not like a question. It was a statement — a tout fini to their entire struggle. They weren’t going to agree, so why argue? Why not let it go, and just agree to disagree? Like the WOPR said in WarGames, the only winning move was not to play.

  “Ever since they started me on that drug — BioFuse — it’s like I’m seeing more and more. I can—”

  “Seriously?”

  But Rick was done being polite; Carly and Brendan were halfway up so they only had seconds. He cut Thom off with a firm, unapologetic hand, and delivered his next line like a drill sergeant.

  “Goddammit, listen to me! You’re going to think I’m full of shit right now, but I want you to know this when things get worse, which they absolutely will, so you can start getting it through your thick skull.”

  Thom wanted to snap at that (if either of them had a thick skull, it was Rick), but he, like Brendan, still had some fatherly obedience baked in.

  “Don’t interrupt. Let me talk. If you want to take me back and declare me nuts, that’s your business. Just hear me. You got that?”

  Thom nodded.

  Rick glanced past his son one last time, then spoke in a rush. “My brain has changed. Like … it’s stronger now, but in weird ways. I know things I don’t really think I have any way of knowing.”

  “Like the monster in your closet.”

  Rick gave Thom a death stare, and Thom resolved to do as he was told from here on out, and not interrupt.

  “I think this is happening all over town. I don’t know why. It’s … in here,” he explained, pressing his temples. “Carly’s been bitten. Even you must know, deep down, that it’s a problem, even if this is just Rip Daddy.”

  That was true, but Rip Daddy didn’t spread fast and there was an existing treatment. They just couldn’t get to all the new cases in time.

  “She’s going to become like them eventually. I don’t know why it’s not happening already. Maybe it’s faster when they take bigger bites; I’ve really got no idea. The only way I can explain it to you is … I just know I’m right.”

  Thom didn’t respond. I just know I’m right was the battle cry of every delusion ever known.

  “We have to watch her, Thom. Don’t let her get too close to any of us, especially if she starts to get foggy or not-all-there.”

  “You don’t want to kill her outright? Isn’t that what people do when they’re bitten by zombies?”

  “I want to try something first.” Thom didn’t like his qualifier: first. “You said the vans here were Hemisphere vehicles.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And they took Rosie.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Probably.”

  “Oh yeah? Why?”

  “Because Rosie was with us. And I think they were looking for me.”

  Great. Delusions of grandeur atop everything. “Five vans, Dad. The Big Bad Company took five vans … to come after you.”

  “Not just me. But I was on their list for sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Brendan asked, finally arriving with his mother in tow.

  Thom gave her a glance, hating Rick for the fresh doubt he’d put into his mind. His wife was even whiter than usual, like she’d been drained of blood. That made sense; she’d been through a panic and had just overexerted herself with a bum leg.

  But now Thom also saw something sinister. Something impossible that he still couldn’t entirely ignore. Rick had been right about just hearing him out without comment. He knew the information would settle inside his son’s orderly, no-loose-ends mind and make its home there.

  Now, he’d never be able to get rid of it.

  Rick gave Thom a look: Don’t forget what we talked about.

  Then he took a breath and switched to family-safe mode. “I was just telling your dad that these were Hemisphere vans, and that Hemisphere has me on a list.”

  Thom looked at Carly for help, but she was simply listening, same as Brendan. Seeing their expressions made him feel alone. No longer in the majority, two-thirds of his family had been sucked into Rick’s delusions.

  “Why?” Brendan asked.

  “I’m not sure. I just know the trial I’m in has been strange lately. They’re supposed to send a nurse once a week. She comes to my room, asks me a few questions about my mood, then tests me with flash cards, like to see if I can remember them. Sometimes I get a little medical exam. And they draw blood every time. They give me another shot of BioFuse at the end, then they thank me and leave. Always polite. Always the same old routine. But the past few times, they’ve sent someone with the nurse. Doesn’t look like a doctor, though. He always wears a black suit with a skinny black tie.”

  That made Thom blink. If it was fantasy, Rick had spun it beautifully.

  “Now there are always extra tests. Sometimes I’m asked what’s on flash cards they haven’t shown me yet. At first I thought it was a mistake, but then the nurse did the same thing again and again. They don’t just draw blood now, either. Once they explained that I would have to go under. It was one of my fuzzier days so I suppose I agreed. I woke up with my leg aching and little Band-Aids on my thigh and forehead. I think they might have taken samples from my brain.”

  “Out of your leg?” Brendan asked.

  “I think that might have been marrow. I think I somehow heard them talking in my sleep.”

  Thom laughed.

  “Quiet, Thom,” said Carly.

  “And now Hemisphere’s here,” Rick continued, o
blivious to the ill looks exchanged between man and wife. “They’re at the mall, right when this happens. And what do they do? They round up folks coming out, pick some to take with them, and scatter the rest.”

  “They scattered. You don’t know that Hemisphere—”

  Carly raised her eyebrows at Thom, so he stopped.

  Rick said, “I know what I did in there was stupid, but I also think it saved my ass. I wanted to see what was going on because I was tired of being babysat, so I told Rosie we’d go shopping and we sneaked away when Carly wasn’t paying attention. But when we got to the top of the escalator, I looked back and saw four of your Men in Black back where we’d just been sitting, wearing silver guns with belled ends.”

  Thom rolled his head back. “Oh, bullshit! You’re just repeating back what I said!”

  “Dad,” Brendan said. “Maybe we should listen.”

  “They kept their coats closed, but a few had them unbuttoned so whenever they swung around, I could see the weapons. And I’m sure that they were looking for me.”

  “Of course you are,” Thom said. “Because you’re paranoid.”

  But even he was starting to wish he’d shut up because evidence of blossomed paranoia was right in front of them in the form of five departed vans. Even Thom had thought the vehicles were suspicious when he and Brendan had come through.

  “Maybe, but here’s what I know,” Rick said, his tone already less confrontational as he won allies. “Rosie’s not exactly a sprinter. The fastest I’ve seen her move is when the cafeteria has green Jell-O, and it’s a mild shuffle at best. We were inside a while, then behind Macy’s, where nobody else was coming out. So, okay, people ran off. But Brendan says Rosie went with the suit guys. Are we supposed to believe that she broke free, then hauled ass? If for some reason she did decide to run away, I’m pretty sure we’d still be able to see her. At the very least, Brendan would have, once he escaped all the mayhem.”