Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

“I’m still afraid I don’t completely understand.”

“Dr. Chella wants Mom’s job, and has used every excuse she can possibly think of to get it. For the longest time, I was her pet reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can run circles around Chella when it comes to almost anything regarding the CRS. I grew up there. I’ve never even really been anywhere else. I know all the science about the reanimated and I know every theory, every computer. Hell, I could give you a reasonable prediction of what each scientist at the center will bring in for lunch. But I don’t actually have a degree in anything, so Chella’s tried to prove I have no right to all the responsibilities Mom sticks me with. But she eventually got shot down on that one by the president himself. She knew her reputation was on the line, so the next thing she decided to latch on to was Mom’s pet theories about reanimated evolution. Chella said there was no hard proof. Except now Mom has it, I think.”

“You think? If I understand all this Z7 stuff, and admittedly I’m not really sure that I do completely, then I’m all the proof she needs, ain’t I?”

“Well, yeah, if you’re actually a reanimated. You still just look like any other human to me.”

“The last thing I remember before twenty-four hours ago was being attacked by my apparently dead wife nearly fifty years ago. So you’ll pardon me if even I’m wondering just how human I could possibly be at this point.”

“Oh,” Liddie said. She didn’t seem to have anything to add to that.

Edward’s attention went back out the window. He stared for several minutes, trying to find more ways to associate this new world with the one he had known. There wasn’t a lot to see in the middle of the night, but everywhere he looked he saw more evidence that the world had moved on without him. The cars here were different, the architecture was different, even the design of the street signs was different. At least in Fond du Lac the city had maintained some semblance of the place it had once been. This city, however, had not really even been here fifty years ago. The van may have been much more comfortable, but Edward actually found himself feeling nostalgic for the sights from Ringo’s cage.

They passed a squat building with a bright sign out front. The name of the place read “Zappy’s” in shockingly bright blue letters surrounded by what might have been a bull’s eye.

“What is up with these Zappy’s places, anyways?” Edward asked. “Are they sort of like McDonald’s?”

“What the hell is McDonald’s?” Liddie asked back.

“Wow, never thought I’d see that day,” Edward said.

“So you really don’t remember anything of the last fifty years?”

Edward almost said that he didn’t, but he remembered the brief flashes he’d had in his dreams. He couldn’t be certain that they were memories, but that was what they felt like. It just didn’t seem possible that he could have been shambling around for nearly half a century and not have registered any of it.

He looked at Liddie and the expression of genuine curiosity on her face. She hadn’t asked the question so she could further study him like her mother had. She wanted to know because she honestly thought of him as more than just a scientific specimen.

“I kind of had flashes when I was dreaming,” Edward said. “Like the last fifty years really were just a dream or something like that. I don’t really remember anything other than that.”

“I’m sure that with all our know-how we can help you remember,” Liddie said.

Edward thought of the red tinge to his dreams. Bright red fading to maroon, like blood. He wasn’t sure he wanted to remember anything from that time. Maybe it was better to ignore it and pretend he’d just been in a really long sleep. A zombie Rip Van Winkle, maybe. But then there was that last memory of Julia biting him, and Dana. That memory, at least, he needed to find. He needed to know what had happened to them.

“Maybe,” Edward said. “Is that really what you intend to do? Help me?”

“Of course it is. What else are you expecting us to do?”

“Dissect me?”

“What do you think we are, monsters?”

“How would I know?”

“Trust me, we’re not the monsters,” Liddie said. “We’re the ones who are making sure the monsters never come back.”

Edward was tempted to tell her that back where he’d come from the monsters had never really left, but it was already obvious to him that Stanford would be a completely different world than the one he’d already seen. She probably honestly believed what she said.

Edward, on the other hand, still had no idea what to believe.

The world was red again, all other color sucked out of it. He felt like he’d just come from somewhere, someplace foreign and unfamiliar and full of confusion and pain. There was none of that here. He could sniff the air and catch something that maybe once upon a time he would have thought to be putrid, but now smelled like honey. The scent was all around him. It was intoxicating. It was comforting.

There were other forms around him, forms that he would recognize as being like him if he had anything like self-awareness. All of them shuffled down a street. Sometimes forms would break away from the group for some inexplicable reason, sometimes others would join them. There was no real pattern to the movements that he was capable of noticing, but he didn’t care. What he did care about was the new scent that had come to his nose from some light breeze. There was something else nearby, something like the forms around him and yet not like them at the same time. A scent that felt fresher. A scent that made his long-forgotten stomach try rumbling, even though it hadn’t quite been able to do that for a long time.

There were subtle shifts in the honey odor, and all the forms around him moved at once toward the new scent. Several of the forms at the edge of the group broke off and went in two separate directions while all the others drifted to either side of the street. With fewer forms so close to him he felt more sluggish. He would have said he felt a growing confusion, if he had even been capable of understanding what that word meant. Nonetheless there was still that honey scent in the air, ebbing and flowing and generally assuring him that this was what the horde needed for right now.

He had no way of comprehending time or how much of it passed as he stood there on the side of the street. All he knew was that the fresher odor suddenly became stronger. The honey scent changed ever so slightly again, and he began to move.

Something ran down the street. He didn’t know what this thing was supposed to be, although on some level he recognized that it was similar in shape and size to the other forms. It was like them and yet not at the same time. It had no honey scent, and therefore it was something he needed to attack.

It didn’t look where it was going. Instead it looked back over its shoulder as several forms came after it. They weren’t moving very fast, and there was no way they could catch it. They didn’t need to. The rest of the horde came out into the street. It didn’t know what was happening until it was already being ripped apart.

Edward ripped right along with all the others. He could feel the flesh coming apart under his hands as others tried to tear the pieces away from him, but he didn’t care. He had enough of the meat in hand to raise to his mouth and take a great big bite. His rotting teeth were still able to tear through the skin, although one chipped on a bone. He barely felt it. He didn’t even taste anything as the bits of the horde’s prey slid over his tongue and down his throat. It took only a brief time for the horde to reduce the thing to little more than a skeleton. Then Edward went back to shuffling down the street, reveling as always in that honey scent, and was not even aware that anything had happened.