Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

He experimented with it a little more before he turned back. He tried various things, assorted messages to this woman about what she should do, although most of them resulted in nothing more than that confused deer-in-the-headlights look. With a few differences in the scent, though, he at least managed the command away , sending her further down the gully. Maybe she would find a way out somewhere down there. She could come across a spot flat enough that she could walk out and go on about what passed for her life now. He had no idea what might become of her. It was entirely possible she might find some sort of salvation, something like he had. Or she could join a horde and hunt somebody down. Or perhaps she wouldn’t find a way out at all. He didn’t feel like he had any right to judge her, no matter what her path might be.

Liddie was awake and looking nervous inside the van when he came back. She looked relieved as he came back to the door and opened it, although she also looked like she was trying her damnedest not to show it.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“I guess I just had some things to work out in my head.”

“And did you?”

He sat down on the seat next to her and held her hand. Nothing else yet. This was all he thought he was ready for. The memory of Julia’s death, while technically very old, was still fresh in his mind. He had no idea how long it would take him to accept that and move on, but at least he had a general idea what, or rather who, he wanted to move on to.

“Yeah, I guess I sort of did.”

She fell asleep again next to him, and while he couldn’t sleep he at least stayed next to her through the whole night, never letting go of her hand.

The strangest thing of all for Liddie was how easy it became to forget that she was on the run from the government with a talking and thinking reanimated sitting in her passenger seat. She didn’t even realize until now how long it had been since she’d thought of him in those terms. The last time Edward had been nothing more than a “reanimated” to her had been before he’d gotten off that plane with her mother. As soon as she’d seen a normal human-looking face greeting her with a mix of expectance and apprehension, he’d simply been a man. Now he was a man she was going to be with for a long time, most likely, and it was her turn to be apprehensive and expectant.

There was a lot of driving to do, and a lot of silence for them both to fill along the way. She’d already learned quite a bit about him and his previous life while he’d been in custody with the CRS, but at the time she’d still been going for a pretense of professionalism and had left her own life out of the conversation. Now he asked all these questions about her, and she was embarrassed to admit she didn’t have a whole lot to tell. Her whole life had been with the CRS, and she hadn’t had much outside of it.

“What about friends?” Edward asked as they drove through the Nevada desert. They’d gone past Reno about an hour ago, going into the city only long enough to find a Zappy’s for lunch and put some more fuel in the van. They didn’t stay any longer than they had to. A couple just passing through by van was a strange enough sight to cause a few people to ask all the wrong questions, and they hadn’t even wanted to dine in at the Zappy’s for fear of someone taking note of Edward’s meat-only diet.

“Of course I had friends,” Liddie said.

“You never mentioned them while we were at the CRS.”

“That’s because…okay, so I guess my friends weren’t really much of friends. I think the last really good friend I had was in high school.”

“And her name was?”

“Jamie.”

“Is there any particular reason you stopped being friends with her.”

“Is this really something you want to know?” Liddie asked.

“Just trying to get to know you better. Because honestly, you strike me as the kind of person who should have lots of friends.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re just…I don’t know, friendly. And compassionate and caring, I guess.”

Liddie sighed. “Jamie slept with my boyfriend, if you must know. In fact, she did it just two days after I let him take my virginity.”

“Ouch. Sorry. You don’t have to talk about that if you don’t want.”

“No, it’s ancient history. And to be honest, I’ve never really talked to anyone about it. Not even my mom. I could tell her anything, usually, but that was a particularly busy time for her at the CRS. Right after that I started helping her at the CRS more. Stanford’s population exploded, Land’s End University became huge, and I was needed for all this administration work. Went right into it. So I just let Jamie have the son of a bitch. She popped out a bunch of youngsters from him, according to what I heard, and then he went and cheated on her.”

“Is that something you wish you had?”

“What?”

“Youngsters.”

“No. Never had the urge.”

“I didn’t either, until Julia discovered she was pregnant with Dana. Changed my perspective.”

“I just never saw the point. Plenty of other people were doing it. It wasn’t like the rest of the world needed me to repopulate it.”

“So, what, that was it then?” Edward asked. “No attempts at dating after that? No urge to at least have someone else in your life?”

“Oh, I tried dating. Sort of a disaster, really. Lots of students from Land’s End, one severely misjudged coworker with the CRS. I mean, it’s not like I’ve been celibate. Probably would have been better if I had.”

“Someone from the CRS? Anyone I met?”

Liddie bit her lips shut. Edward raised an eyebrow. “Really?” he asked. “Who was it?”

“I’m not telling. You’d laugh.”

“No I won’t.”

“Trust me, you would.”

“I promise. Come on, the suspense is killing me here.”

“Um, okay, fine. It’s just, um, I might have once had a drunken New Year’s Eve moment in a closet with…uh, Carter.”

“Actually I don’t think I ever met him.”

“Yes you did. You just knew him better as Dr. Emmanuel.”

Edward didn’t say anything. Liddie looked over at him and realized he was biting the inside of his cheek and desperately trying not to laugh.

“You promised.”

“I know.”

“Because, well, you know how it is. After a few drinks even the biggest dirtbag can begin to look good. Stop laughing!”

“I’m not laughing! See how much I’m not laughing. Words cannot express how much I’m not…STOP!”

She didn’t even realize what he was saying at first. Her eyes had been on him for the last minute, so she hadn’t seen what was ahead. He couldn’t have been paying any attention either, because there was no way he would have missed the reanimated in the middle of the road. Her brain immediately did calculations of the situation and she hit the brakes, but perhaps she didn’t hit them as hard as she could. They’d been going pretty fast yet the road had been in as much disrepair as all the others they’d been on. Slowing down too quickly would end in an accident, she knew. And the group of reanimated, about five in all, seemed so far away when she hit the brake. She didn’t expect the distance to close so quickly. She swerved a little, but not enough. Somewhere in her mind, she still didn’t consider it that important if she just ran down a few reanimated.

Three of them were out of the way in time. Two were not. She hit one of them head on, and the van still had enough speed that the thing’s rotting body splattered apart on impact. Its head slammed into the windshield and cracked it just as blackish-red blood smeared all over it. There was a second thump, but Liddie only barely heard it over her and Edward’s screams.