Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

"That will be all right," said Surn, reaching for the door.

"I'll get the room key," murmured Lorien.

"There's one other missing person," said Marion. "Pat Malone. You haven't seen him, have you?"

"Pat Malone is dead," said Brendan Surn in his gentle way, as if reminding her of an obscure current event.

Lorien Williams hurried over and took him by the arm. "No, Brendan," she said. "It's Peter Deddingfield you're thinking of that's dead. And Curtis Phillips. We saw Mr. Malone last night, remember?"

Marion took a deep breath. "I'll just go and find Pat Malone, then. Someone at the desk will show you to the conference room." She turned and fled down the hall, and her cheeks were wet.

Geoffrey Duke had taken his place at the lectern in the conference room and was giving background information to the press. Behind him were two enlarged black-and-white photos, labeled

"Wall Hollow 1954" and "Wall Hollow Today." They were taken from the same spot on a mountainside overlooking the valley. The first picture looked like a calendar illustration of a New England town. It showed a small village of white houses and a steepled country church nestled among the oak trees in a green valley. It conjured up images of Norman Rockwell paintings and old Frank Capra movies.

The second photograph was hardly recognizable as the same spot. The two main roads of the village were still visible, outlining the dimensions of the town, but only a few of the stone buildings remained standing, surrounded by craters marking the sites of the houses, and the blackened skeletons of oak trees. The scene, a study in mud and desolation, evoked comparisons with disaster photos: bomb sites, and towns laid waste by hurricanes. People would study the first picture of Wall Hollow, glance at the second, and then look away at nothing for a few moments before they went back to what they were doing.

Geoffrey Duke consulted his notes on the technical aspects of the drawdown, and called the conference to order. After a few words of welcome, he plunged into his well of statistics. "Breed-love Lake has a water surface area of sixty-six thousand acres, extending sixteen miles upstream," he said to the furiously scribbling reporters. "The dam, which is three hundred and eighteen feet high, is thirteen hundred feet thick at the base and produces fifty thousand kilowatts of power with its two generators."

"How did they construct the dam?" asked the Times reporter.

"They selected a deep, narrow mountain gorge and filled it with three million cubic yards of dirt and rock. The dam's core is one million four hundred eighty-four thousand and seven hundred cubic yards of compacted clay, surrounded on either side by two million cubic yards of rock."

"Where'd they get all that rock?"

Geoff was ready for that question. "Three quarries near the construction site. They loosen the rock with coyote tunnel blasts using Nitramon."

"Using what?"

"It's a brand name for ammonium nitrate. Dupont. Digging and loading the blast tunnels took weeks."

"What about the people in the valley?" asked Sarah Ashley. "Did they just get kicked off their land?"

"No. The TVA bought the town for thirty-five thousand dollars."

Murmurs of disbelief came from the crowd. "What if people didn't want to sell?"

Geoff shrugged. "That was too bad, I guess."

"How many people were relocated?" asked another journalist, who was trying to calculate how much each family received.

Geoff consulted his notes. "More than a hundred early on in the project. Seven hundred and sixty-three at the closing of the dam. Eighty-five percent relocated in the east Tennessee counties of Carter and Johnson. Five percent left the state. Including, of course, most of the Lanthanides."

Bunzie whistled a few bars of "California, Here I Come" and waved for Geoff to continue.

"The drawdown, which began six weeks ago for the purpose of repairing the dam, was effected by opening the sluice gates-"

Jay Omega was sitting in a front row seat beside Erik Giles. "I wonder what's keeping Marion," he murmured.

"I don't know. She may be dawdling on purpose to miss this technical spiel," Giles suggested. "I'm surprised that Malone isn't here, though."

"I doubt if he'll miss the boat," said Jay Omega. "He seemed very keen on the reunion."

Erik Giles grunted. "Are you familiar with the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty?" he asked.

"Sort of," said Jay. "Why?"

"Pat Malone reminds me of the bad fairy at the christening."

In the second-floor hallway of the Mountaineer Lodge, Marion knocked again. "Mr. Malone!" she said, more loudly this time. "Are you awake? The reunion sent me to get you!" She put her ear to the door, straining to catch the sound of the shower or the television. All was silent. Marion began to become concerned. After all, she told herself, they are rather elderly. As she straightened up, trying to decide what to do next, she caught sight of the maid, pushing her cleaning cart around the corner by the elevator.

"I hope I'm not about to make an idiot of myself," Marion muttered, hurrying to intercept her.

A few moments and several explanations later, the chambermaid, muttering, "I'm not real sure we ought to do this," used her passkey to unlock the door of Pat Malone's room. As the door swung open, Marion called out, "Mr. Malone! Are you all right?"

An instant later they could see that he wasn't. The smell of vomit and voided bowels reached them and made them draw back, even before Marion saw the stiffening form of the room's occupant, sprawled across the sill of the bathroom. "You call," she said, nudging the maid out of shock, "I'll see if there's anything to be done for him."

While the maid was spluttering into the telephone, attempting to make the front desk understand the situation, Marion knelt beside the body of the recently resurrected Pat Malone. His eyes stared up at her, sightless, with the same glare that had so daunted the Lanthanides at last night's reception. Steeling herself for the sensation of touching dead flesh, Marion reached for his wrist, confirming the absence of a pulse. This time, she thought to herself, there could be no doubt of the death of Pat Malone. This time he wasn't coming back.

Bunzie was in the midst of telling his highly romanticized version of the burying of the time capsule to a captive audience. Each time he mentioned one of his fellow Lanthanides, he prefaced the name with superlatives: the late, great Dale Dugger, the macabre genius Curtis Phillips, and the literary legend Brendan Surn. The more perceptive of the journalists might have noticed that Ruben Mistral did not really discuss any of the stories actually put into the time capsule by himself and his comrades, but perhaps they did not notice this omission, since Mistral was a charming and well-polished speaker. He seemed to be winding down the litany of reminiscences when a balding man in a dark suit appeared at the door and motioned for Mistral's attention.

The ever alert Geoff Duke hurried to the back of the room to confer with the hotel employee. "What is it?" he hissed, grasping the man's elbow and propelling him out of earshot. "We're in the middle of our presentation here."

The hotel clerk was a study in unruffled dignity. "We thought you ought to be notified, sir. One of your party has passed away."

"Oh, shit!" murmured Geoff, caught off guard by the news. "I was afraid one of those old geezers might croak from the excitement…" His voice trailed off when he caught the disapproving glint in the listener's eye. "I mean, what a shock. I can't believe it. What a complete tragedy. Which one of them?" His mind was furiously manipulating publicity options concerning the untimely demise of the literary legend Brendan Surn. Perhaps a cremation and hasty burial in the mire of the ruined farm in place of the time capsule? Visions of Newsweek photos danced in his head. He wondered if he could safely paraphrase the Gettysburg Address in the eulogy: But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. His hustler's reverie was cut short by the hotel manager's reply.