Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

Or maybe nothing. Rae probably hadn’t known this was going to happen, but it didn’t matter to Edward right now. All the mattered was that all his hopes at being able to do anything about his new condition and life were wrecked before he’d had any chance at all. He was screwed, all because some agency he’d never even had a reason to hear of before today suddenly decided that he might be a threat or might be something interesting to dissect. None of these people cared that he was going through hell and he had no family anymore and no friends in the God-forsaken new world.

And he was sick of it. Without thinking of it anymore, he cleared away enough of his tears to see, then scrambled for the rifle from where it had skidded when the truck stopped.

“Stop!” someone screamed, and Edward ducked down in the truck bed as a gun went off and a bullet whistled past somewhere over his head.

“Holy shit, what the fuck is going on?” Ringo screamed from the front, but Edward ignored him. Instead he looked at the rifle in his hand. The trigger, at least, looked exactly like any other he had ever seen. He could use it if he must, although he had no idea how many bullets it had. He searched for the safety to make sure it was off, not even sure if the rifle had one, and he heard several car doors in front of and behind the truck open and many people get out.

“Confirmed,” a female voice said from somewhere behind the truck. There was another sound as a car raced down the street towards the altercation, but that seemed incidental to Edward at the moment. “We have the Z7 trapped and it is armed.”

There was a squawk from a walkie-talkie followed by a static-covered voice that Edward couldn’t make out, but he could tell that the voice on the other end was frantic.

“Driver!” a man called out from in front. “Get out of the truck now and step away from the vehicle.”

Ringo’s door opened just enough for him to call out. “On whose God-damned authority do you think you’re doing this?”

“Joint task force from the CRS and Merton. You are harboring a biological weapon.”

Biological weapon ? That was almost funny enough to make Edward snicker. Fifty years may have passed, but the government still used the same terminology. Then he realized that he was supposed to be the so-called biological weapon. There was no way the government would react the same way for any other zombie out there. He had to wonder just what it was that they thought was so dangerous about him.

“You people are absolutely crazy!” Ringo said, but he slowly opened the door and got out of the truck, keeping his hands up in the air as he stepped away. “You rat-shit government bastards better not harm my truck, you got that?”

“Step clear, sir,” the male voice said again, and Ringo left Edward’s limited vision from in the bed.

“You, the zombie in the truck!” the female voice said. “We know you can understand us and we know you can use that rifle. Throw it out of the truck now!”

He was surrounded, and they had already shown that they were willing to fire on him. His hands tightened on the rifle, shaking, and he stared down at them. They were mostly healed, with only a few smaller spots of missing flesh and a slightly unhealthy color to his skin. He probably looked nearly back to normal, but he didn’t think any of these people would care. He was just a monster to them. They didn’t give a shit that he could feel and think, that he was in pain and mourning his family and angry that everything had been taken away from him. These people would never care. And they wouldn’t care for a single second if he stood up right now and they all had to shoot him down. If he really was still a zombie then he might be able to survive bullets to most of his body, but a single headshot would kill him for real.

And he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had nothing, no chance, and if they were going to kill him in cold blood then just for this moment he didn’t care as long as he took a few of them down with him.

A car screeched to a stop behind the truck, and a new female voice screamed. “Stop! Everyone stop! Stand down! Don’t shoot him!”

“He’s armed!” the first woman said. “DuFresne gave us permission to take him down!”

“DuFresne doesn’t have the slightest fucking clue what he’s doing. I order every single one of you to lower your weapons.”

Edward held his breath, trying to listen for any sounds that the people surrounding the truck were complying. He couldn’t tell for sure. He could hear other people now murmuring as footsteps came closer. A lot of people, probably not just the ones who had stopped the truck. This whole incident had likely caught the attention of everyone living in the buildings around them, and they were coming out to see what the fuss was about. Although Edward definitely didn’t want to see anyone innocent hurt, he hoped at least that the onlookers would make the people from the cars think twice before they fired.

After a few more seconds of silence from behind the truck, the new woman spoke again. “Sir? You in the truck? Can you talk?”

Edward took a deep breath and tried not to let his voice sound like he had just been crying. “Yes.”

There was a murmur from a few people. “Sir,” the woman said, “could you please sit up where we can see you?”

“No, you’ll shoot me!”

“We won’t shoot you, sir. Please, I’m sure you’re very confused right now. I can help.”

“Yeah, confused sure as hell is right. I might even say I’m a little pissed off at the way I’m getting treated so far, too.”

There was a pause in the woman’s words that Edward probably wouldn’t have heard if he hadn’t been relying solely on his ears. “Pissed off. Yes, I’m sure you are. But we’re not here to hurt you.”

“Sure as hell could have fooled me.”

“I understand. I’m sorry. There was a miscommunication. The people we asked to help us bring you in, they don’t truly understand what you are.”

“And just what the hell am I, huh? Would someone please finally answer me that?”

“Yes, sir, I will, but I need you to throw the gun out of the truck first. Can you please do that for me?”

It could be a trick. In the past he might have believed that was just a paranoid way to think, but after everything that had happened so far he figured he had a right to be paranoid now. They could just want him disarmed so he would be easier to shoot. But this new woman that had suddenly shown up talked to him unlike most people had so far. Even Rae had been unwilling to treat him like a person at first. This woman, however, kept calling him ‘sir’. Not zed, not zombie, not monster, not thing, but ‘sir”.

And she actually sounded like she knew what she was talking about when she said she knew what was going on.

“I’ll do it, but on one condition.”

“What is it, sir?”

“I’ll do it if you stop calling me sir. I worked for a living, thank you very much.”

The woman made what was perhaps the most shocking sound since he had woken up. He had almost forgotten how wonderful that sound was. She laughed.

“Absolutely. What’s your name?”

Edward threw Spanky out through the bars and heard it clatter on the road. He stood up with his hands where everyone could see them. There were a few gasps from onlookers, probably at the still-sorry state of his face, but they weren’t as bad as he would have expected earlier. He could probably pass as a regular human by now, albeit one with a serious skin condition. For some reason that brought him a great deal of satisfaction.

“Edward,” he said. “Edward Schuett.”

By the time she reached the crowd gathered around the cars and truck, Rae’s lungs burned from the speed with which she had been pedaling her bike. The crowd was several people thick, and Rae had to stand on the pedals before she stopped in order to see anything. There didn’t appear to be much to see. Edward stood on the road behind the truck as two men, dressed much like DuFresne and Patal had been, quickly patted him down for more weapons. More men and women dressed the same way, either people from Merton Security or the CRS, were moving swiftly through the crowd and confiscating any cameras or recording devices. Many of the onlookers loudly protested this, but the security people made no effort to hide the guns strapped in holsters underneath their jackets. The crowd might be angry, but they were the descendants of survivors. They knew a time not to fight when they saw one.