Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

A fold out table had been set up near the van, and the doctor set the PVA on it and proceeded to pull out a needle to draw blood. Edward didn’t wait for her to ask and rolled up his sleeve. The doctor’s eyes went wide and Liddie gasped. Even the guard fidgeted a little.

“Holy Christ on a cracker,” Liddie said.

Edward frowned and looked at Gates. “Did I do something wrong?”

“That’s…that’s not possible,” the doctor said.

“What?” Edward asked. “Could someone please fill me in here?”

“You rolled up your sleeve,” Gates said.

“So?”

“The reanimated don’t see that someone is about to draw their blood and then roll up a sleeve to help. They try to eat the person instead. Also, I’d guess Dr. Chella is a little surprised that you’re speaking.”

Dr. Chella started to repack her case. “This is ridiculously childish, even for you, Gates. You come back here with your supposed Z7 and it’s a fake. Not only is it a fake, but not even a very good one. Well this is it. I’m reporting your little prank directly to the president, do you hear me? You’re finally done.”

Edward looked at Gates, who did nothing but stare at Dr. Chella with a smirk. The doctor finished packing up again and turned to the guard. “Well, are we going to get out of here?”

Now it was the guard’s turn to look confused. “Ma’am, um, Director Gates hasn’t given us permission to leave.”

“Chella, are you done throwing your hissy fit now?” Gates asked. “Because the Z7 still has his sleeve rolled up for you.”

“I am so sick and tired of all your…” Dr. Chella began, but Gates cut her off.

“Whether you like to admit it or not, I am your boss. And as your boss I am ordering you to take Mr. Schuett’s blood and test it.”

Chella glared at Gates and Edward, even throwing an evil eye at Liddie despite the young woman having done nothing except suppress a giggling fit during the whole exchange, then unpacked her equipment once more. The tests were pretty much the same as the ones conducted on Edward in Wisconsin, except for the fact that Dr. Chella was decidedly less careful where she stuck the needle in his arm. She had to jab him three times in all before she finally found the vein, probably because she didn’t even bother to look at his arm for the first two tries. When she finally tested his blood both she and Liddie leaned over to intently watch as the little screen showed the results.

“That’s impossible,” Dr. Chella said.

“Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Edward said.

“You really are a reanimated,” Liddie said.

“You know, I’m starting to think I really don’t like being called that any more than I like being called a zombie,” Edward said.

“This is…this is insane,” Dr. Chella said. “There cannot be an honest-to-God Z7.”

“I think it’s time you and I finally had a long overdue talk,” Gates said to her. She turned to Liddie. “You really want something new to do? I’ll have you be the one to escort Mr. Schuett to Land’s End. It will give the doctor and I some time to go over what this all means.”

Liddie gave her mother a mock salute, then held the back door open for Edward to get in. “After you, good sir. If I can call you sir, that is.”

Edward sighed. “I suppose it’s a step better than ‘reanimated.’“

Liddie took the seat next to him while the guard went around and got in the driver’s seat. Once Liddie slid the door closed he could no longer hear any of the conversation between Gates and Chella, but he could still hear them talking very heatedly.

“It’s comforting, really,” Edward said.

“What is?” Liddie asked.

“After fifty years, at least one thing is still the same. The government officials still act like spoiled brats.”

Liddie’s laugh felt like the first normal thing he’d heard since he’d woken up in the Walmart.

When Dana was seven, Edward and Julia had made plans to go to Chicago for a weekend with her. That had been about the time Dana had begun an obsession with dolphins, and Julia had thought it would be a good idea to take her to the Shedd Aquarium for her birthday. But it hadn’t been the dolphins and aquarium that Edward himself had been excited about. It had been the buildings of downtown. He’d spent all of his life in Wisconsin, and most of it just in Fond du Lac. Skyscrapers weren’t something he’d ever had a real chance to see. He’d briefly seen some of the towers in Milwaukee on the rare occasion he got to go see a Brewers game, but he knew Chicago would make Milwaukee look like a bunch of shacks. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so excited to see them. There had just been something about the idea that tiny people could really build things so huge. He never got to see them, however. He’d busted his foot pretty bad at work the week before Dana’s birthday. They’d had to skip Chicago that year, even though they all promised themselves they’d do it the next year. They never did.

That memory came back to Edward as the van drove through the new (or at least new to him) version of Stanford. There were several skyscrapers, all with designs and architecture he would have never been able to imagine. One even looked like a hundred-story pyramid. It was breathtaking. Unlike on the plane, it suddenly became a lot easier to forget his current situation.

It helped that Liddie Gates didn’t have the same severe and serious aspect as her mother. The young woman smiled at him the whole time they drove. She also didn’t take the precautions her mother had. There was no gun pointed at him during this journey, no notebook, and certainly no talk about preserving his soiled underwear.

“So, um, hi,” Edward said.

“Oh, hi! I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t really do a formal introduction. I’m Claudia Gates, but I prefer…”

“Liddie. That much I got,” Edward said. “I’m Edward Schuett.”

“Edward? Not Ed or Eddy?”

“No, Edward. My dad was never big on nicknames. A career military man. Everything always had to be exact with no shortcuts.”

“Well it’s good to meet you, Edward.” She held out her hand for him to shake. Edward didn’t take it. He just stared at it.

“Is there something wrong?” Liddie asked.

“It’s just…not a lot people have offered to shake my hand over the last twenty-four hours. Most of them have either tried to cage me or shoot me.”

“You don’t have to shake it if you don’t want to,” Liddie said, but she didn’t pull her hand back. The smile never left her face.

Edward hesitated, then took her hand. He couldn’t help but smile back.

“Can I ask you something?” Edward asked.

“Probably, but I reserve the right to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about if it’s something I’m not supposed to tell.”

“Are there a lot of things you’re not supposed to tell?”

“In the CRS? Of course. What else would you expect?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve ever heard of the CRS before today.”

“What, have you been living under a rock?”

“No, apparently I’ve been a zombie.”

“Oh. Uh, right. So what did you want to ask?”

“That thing back there. What was that? Between your mom and the doctor?”

Liddie’s smile finally disappeared as she rolled her eyes. “That horrible witch of a woman keeps making power plays and failing.”

“Uh, I’m assuming you’re calling the doctor the witch, and not your mother?”

“Oh, don’t make the mistake. My mom can be a horrendous bitch too when she wants to be, and that’s usually quite often. But the difference between them is that Mom is good at it.”