Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

"She was married to both of them," Lorien Williams explained. She was pleased to finally be in the know on a bit of Lanthanides gossip.

"Separately?" smirked Pat Malone. "Or did you all take Stranger in a Strange Land as a directive from God?"

"I think that's enough, Pat," said Brendan Surn quietly. "There is nothing to be gained by rumor-mongering, as you put it a few minutes ago."

Bunzie looked relieved that order had been restored. "That's right, Malone. I asked you before, are you going to abide by the business arrangement already established?"

"Certainly, count me in. I'm sure you drove a shrewd bargain, Bundschaft." He ambled toward the door. "I may have another little project to pitch to the editors, though. Strictly on my own. Good night, all." Without waiting for anyone's reply, he was gone.

Bunzie stared dejectedly at the closed door through which Pat Malone had just left. "What the hell do we do now?"

The reunion was only seven hours away, but no one was sleepy. The full moon shone on the newly resurrected Watauga River, which coursed again in its original channel, a ribbon of light in the muddy wasteland of the valley. In the long grass on the hillsides above the shoreline, crickets chirped in a ceaseless drone. It was a peaceful night in the mountains, but no one forgot that when the sun rose to reveal the barren lake bed, the dead would be back among them. Indeed, one of them had returned already.

After Pat Malone's invasion of the Lanthanides' reunion, no one wanted to talk anymore about old times. Within a space of ten minutes, everyone at the reception in the Laurel Room had pleaded fatigue or the lateness of the hour, and had retired to their own rooms to ponder the evening's events.

Jim Conyers had been unmoved by the encounter, and he felt a thickening in his senses that he knew was a craving for sleep, but Barbara, who was outraged, wanted to discuss it.

She sat on the foot of the bed, staring at herself in the mirror as she did her customary one hundred strokes a night with her hairbrush. Her shoulder-length curls-still a rich shade of chestnut (now obtained from a bottle)-shone in the lamplight, and her face seemed as unlined as a young girl's.

"That certainly was a performance tonight!" she remarked, brushing vigorously.

"Bravado," said Jim, stifling a yawn. "The Lanthanides loved to make scenes. They used to remind me of a bunch of Shetland pony stallions: terribly fierce and sincere, but so insignificant as to be comical."

"Well, it was a revelation to me," said Barbara, checking out his expression in the mirror. "I never knew that all those sexual high jinks were going on up at Dale's place."

Conyers shrugged. "They weren't, really. Jazzy Holt was somebody the others met at a science fiction convention. She never even visited the farm. They-er-got together at conventions, and spent the rest of the time writing soulful letters to her. She married Curtis after he left Wall Hollow, in '56, I think, and they divorced pretty soon after, about the time of his nervous breakdown."

Barbara sniffed. "Curtis Phillips was always crazy, if you ask me. Not that the rest of them were much of a contrast. Anyhow, it's a good thing for you I didn't know about such goings-on in 1954, Jim Conyers, or I'd have thought twice about marrying you." Another thought occurred to her. "What about Earlene Riley and Angela Arbroath? You can't say they didn't visit!"

"Angie was a high school kid, and built like a pipe cleaner back then. Not exactly a femme fatale. Most of us treated her like a kid sister. And Earlene was a pudding-faced girl who used sex to build her self-esteem."

Barbara stared. "Jim! Do you mean she thought she was worth something because that pack of drips wanted to sleep with her? Lo-ord God! They would have slept with an Angus heifer if they could have caught one!"

Jim's smile was rueful. "Well, I wouldn't have!" he told her. "I had the prettiest girl in east Tennessee as my one and only."

She put down the brush and came to hug him. As he enfolded her in his arms and lay back on the bed, he thought how good his life had been, and for the thousandth time he was glad he had never told Barbara about that one little incident with Earlene Riley. He wondered if Pat Malone remembered it.

Several rooms farther down the hall, Ruben Mistral was pacing, while his preppy minion, still wearing a coat and tie, sat at the writing table by the window, notebook at the ready, in case there were instructions to be carried out. "He's not dead!" said Bunzie for the umpteenth time. "The son of a bitch isn't dead!"

The minion, a recent USC film school graduate named Geoff, ventured an opinion. "Excuse me, sir? Are you sure he's really Pat Malone? We never asked to see his driver's license."

Bunzie snarled. "Of course it's him! He may not look the same, but there's nothing wrong with that steel trap he calls a mind. His memory is perfect! Why couldn't he have gone ga-ga instead of poor old Brendan? Did you notice how out of it Surn was?"

"Not especially, sir. I had never met him before. He did seem less forthright than Mr. Malone."

"So did Attila the Hun. I should have known Pat's death was too good to be true! At that party tonight he remembered enough damaging tidbits to keep the Enquirer presses rolling for a month! If he tries to get chatty in front of the reporters, so help me I'll kill him!"

"Would you like me to see that he is barred from the activities tomorrow?" said Geoff, whose job was to anticipate such assignments.

It was tempting, and Bunzie hesitated, thinking of the serenity of a reunion without the Lanthanides' stormy petrel, but as appealing as the suggestion was, it was too risky. "He'd call a press conference the minute our backs were turned," he sighed. "He'd use the hotel fax machine to blitz the media. By the time we schlepped back to the hotel with the time capsule, he'd probably be booked on Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue! I think we're going to have to take him with us-so that we can keep an eye on him."

Geoff, whose threshold of modesty was considerably lower than his boss's, doodled a question mark on his note pad. "Has he really got all that much to tell? It was a long time ago, after all. Sounds like boyish pranks to me."

"That's a point," murmured Bunzie. "Maybe you're right. After all, we live in a world where Supreme Court nominees smoke pot, and elected officials get caught screwing around. Compared to that, we're small potatoes."

Geoff thought of adding, "And since you're not as famous as all that, who'd care," but he thought better of it. Instead he said, "It's not as if there were any terrible secrets within the group."

Bunzie was silent for almost a full minute before he replied. "No, I suppose not. But you can never tell what will strike the public fancy in the silly season! Remember when a moose fell in love with a cow and made Newsweek? All the same, I want you to stay with him tomorrow. Keep him away from the reporters! And the editors, too! Don't let him get off by himself with anyone."

"Sure. No problem." Geoff was careful not to react to this pronouncement. Privately, though, he was thinking, Holy shit! I wonder what those guys were up to back then!

"It went fine tonight. Just fine," said Lorien Williams for the third time. "You were great! Have you taken your medication yet?"

Brendan Surn, who was wearing his homespun monk's robe, was sitting on the edge of his bed, apparently unmoved by the evening's events. He had smiled his vague smile as Lorien helped him change clothes, and he watched the end of a television movie while she got into her pajamas. In response to Lorien's question about his pills, he looked about him for clues that he had taken it, a glass of water, the bottle of pills, but there was no physical evidence to jog his memory. He shook his head, giving her that helpless little smile that meant he didn't know.