Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

But why should she risk her job over this man in the cage with her? She didn’t know him, and all debates aside she still couldn’t truthfully call him a man. She looked at him on the other side of the cage and the way he stared back at her. She couldn’t really tell his emotions from his expression at the moment. Maybe he was pensive, but any rational thinking person would be right now while she decided his fate. There might have been a hint of anger at the thought that she might betray him, and there might have been a hint of hope that she wouldn’t. There was no way to be certain, but she didn’t doubt that underneath that scarred flesh he was at least feeling something.

She wondered what her parents might have done in this situation, but they probably would have already shot him. To them he would have been a zombie and nothing more. They were the products of a different time. Maybe it was time for Rae to embrace being part of a new era.

“Okay, look,” Rae said. “They probably don’t even know you’re here. They’ll know that I’ve seen you because I was asking around about zombie experts, but probably not that I’ve actually been with you and talking to you. So I’ll go in alone and talk. I’ll get rid of them as quick as I can, then I’ll be back out and we’ll figure out somewhere else to put you. Are you okay with that?”

Edward snorted, and Rae could hear some of the anger and frustration coming out in his voice. “Not like I have much of a choice.”

“I wouldn’t get too snippy with me just now, Ed. At the moment I’m the only thing resembling a friend that you’ve got.”

Edward stared at her for a moment, then sighed and nodded. “Sure. You’re right. I guess.”

Rae bit her lip, then set Spanky down facing away from him and moved closer. “Look, I’ll help you figure something out, okay? If you want to figure out why you’re like this, if you want to find out whatever happened to your family, I think I can help. We can look through what little records there are and see if there’s something in there that can point towards your daughter. I promise, I’m here to help you. Got it?”

Edward stared at her again, and this time when he nodded he did it with a little more enthusiasm. “Yes. Okay.”

“Good,” Rae said, then went back to the window and knocked on it again. “Ringo, let me out.”

Making sure that no one was watching—and the street was pretty quiet right now with darkness coming—Rae got out of the back and filled Ringo in on her thoughts while she pulled out her bike. Ringo wasn’t happy about any of it.

“So, what? You just want me to sit out here on the street with a damned zed in the back of my truck while you try to get rid of people from the most powerful company in the city?”

“They’re not as powerful anymore as they want everyone to believe,” Rae said. “And fuck no, I don’t want you to sit here. That would be idiotic. When they come back out they would see you, moron. Just…I don’t know. Drive around for a little bit, and then make sure you’re parked near the corner of Merrill and Park in about half an hour. I hope that’ll be enough time. Hopefully I’ll have thought of a new plan by then.”

“Remind me again why the hell I’m doing what you’re telling me?”

“Because you know as well as I do that Edward is something really fucking special.” She pointed at Edward, who was still sitting in the cage staring out into space and ignoring their conversation. Both Rae and Ringo had forgotten to close the cage after taking out the bike, yet Edward had made no move to escape. She lowered her voice just in case Edward was listening anyway. “And the thinking and speaking part, that’s nothing. I mean, look at him. He’s still healing. He looks like he might as well be freshly dead now. Nothing is supposed to be able to do that, not human, not zombie. This is beyond anything you or me are comprehending right now. You got it? This is way bigger than either of us.”

Ringo looked skeptical, but he shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Just keep going with this for a little while longer, okay?” Rae said.

“Sure. I guess. But there better be a whole shitload of money in it for me at the end of all this, you hear me.”

“Fine. We’ll do what we can. Just drive him around, okay?” She snapped her fingers at Edward, and he looked at her. “We’ll keep the cage unlocked, if that’s fine with you. I don’t think you have anything to gain by trying to get away.”

Edward shrugged. He didn’t look so hot, but Rae supposed that was to be expected.

“Alright, Ringo, get going,” she said. Ringo got back in the front and drove off. Rae watched, not realizing until he was half a block away that she had left Spanky in the back.

“Oh shit. Ringo, wait, come back!” She dropped the bike and ran after the truck for several feet before realizing it was pointless. She wouldn’t be able to catch up with him, and it wasn’t like she wasn’t going to see her baby again. The rifle would still be there when she met up with them in half an hour.

Trying to keep herself calm, Rae entered her apartment building and carried her bike up the three floors to her apartment. It would be best if she acted like nothing special was going on. The people from Merton would probably be waiting for her either outside her apartment or, if Johnny was with them and had his key, inside. They would wonder why she had left her job early, but Rae thought she could come up some story that would suitably cover her tracks. The important thing was that they not think she’d had any more contact with Edward other than the brief interaction at the gate. She was just some random peon who had seen something weird and asked a few questions about it. Nothing special, nothing worth talking about further.

The skuzzy hall outside her apartment was empty, but as she approached her door she thought she heard voices coming from inside. Taking a deep breath, she tried the handle to find that the door was already unlocked. Putting on an expression that she hoped was suitably confused and disturbed, she went in.

“Hello?” she asked. “Johnny, is that you?”

“I’m here,” Johnny said. He sat on the sofa in her front room, and stood as she came through the door. The other three people with him stood as well. Rae pretended to be surprised to see them.

“Oh,” she said. “Um, hello? Who are all you?”

“Rae, this is my immediate supervisor, Lauren Aguilar,” Johnny said, gesturing at the stout woman immediately to his left. “I told her everything you told me on the phone.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure that was nothing anyway.”

“Nothing?” Aguilar asked. “Johnny said you saw a zed that could talk.”

“Yeah, it did,” Rae said. “But I’m sure there’s got to be a logical explanation. Zeds just don’t do that.”

“You’re right, they don’t,” one of the other two men in the room said. He was well-built, balding, and stood ramrod straight in a finely cut suit. The other man wore a similar suit, although he was shorter and had a full head of dark hair. “So if you saw one that did, we need to take this very seriously. More seriously than you seem to be.”

Rae went rigid. All of a sudden she wasn’t sure she could control this situation. “I’m sorry, and who are you?”

“My name is Jean DuFresne,” the balding man said. “And my associate here is Mallicka Patal. We are both here representing the CRS.”

Rae’s breath caught in her throat. The Center for Reanimation Studies. Zombie researchers. “Oh, um, hello. I had no idea that you would be able to get here so fast. I assume you’re going to want to find this zed now and study him.”

“No ma’am,” Patal said. “We are not here to study him. We are not actually with the organization itself. They have merely hired us for security purposes.”