Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

Everything was a blur. Suddenly the world was sideways, and she would have been scared if she was still capable of such an emotion. The one next to her immediately grabbed hold of her, covering her body as glass rained all around them and they were thrown around in the cab of the truck. There were horrible crunching, screeching noises all around her as the truck continued to move across pavement, and then the world turned again as the truck tipped over the rest of the way and came to a rest upside down.

“Aw, fuck me sideways,” the other one said. He let go of her and patted her up and down, then did the same to himself. She let him, not knowing or caring what it meant. She could smell blood in the air, most of it coming from the other one, and something about his shape didn’t look correct. There was a sound from somewhere outside the truck, and then voices. She didn’t understand a thing any of them said, but she could smell their owners. They were something other than her and this other one, something living. She had to get to them, to attack, to rip, to eat, but as she tried to stand up she had incredible difficulty. She had no clue why.

“Damn it, Liddie, stop squirming around for a second so I can help you. You can’t stand up when you’re upside down.”

Those words had more meaning than anything the other voices said, and although they still sounded like gibberish to her she still had a small sense of their meaning. It helped that the sweet scent coming off of him ebbed and flowed with each word. She let him pull her into a lying down position on the ceiling of the truck. He looked like he was about to help her through the now smashed front windshield, but he stopped. She waited.

“Okay, look. Just stay put, you got that? Don’t try to move. Whatever you see out there, whatever you hear…and yeah, whatever you smell, don’t try to get out? Do you understand?”

She didn’t say or do anything. On some level some of the words had made sense, but she had great difficulty turning them into any concept she could grasp. Still, the orders she got through the scent where unmistakable. Wait .

He crawled out through the window, and she waited. Or she tried to. At first it was easy. The scent stayed strong in the cab, and there was no mistaking what it wanted her to do. But something felt strange. She’d felt this odd sensation several times already, although she hadn’t been able to articulate it to the other one and it had faded quickly enough that she hadn’t been able to act on it. The urge to stay by him was strong, and that honey smell in the air was dissipating enough that it couldn’t compete with this other urge. She had brief flashes in her head—thoughts of seeing the other one for the first time, recollections of her skin against his, fractured pieces of memory where she had held his hand. If her heart had still been able to beat faster at these thoughts it would have.

Suddenly she needed to get closer to him again, even if she still didn’t understand. It simply felt important now.

She reached out into the shattered glass on the blacktop, ignoring the way it sliced up her hands, and pulled herself out inch by slow inch. There was a loud noise from very close by, a sound like a small explosion that echoed out over the wide open country. A dim part of her brain could focus enough to see that the truck was at a diagonal across the road with the back end pointed in the direction they had come. The other one (and wasn’t there something else she should have been calling him? There was a word or a name there, but she just couldn’t quite grasp it yet) was at the back end, peering around the side with some weapon in his hand.

“Horton, all we want to do is leave,” he said. “There doesn’t have to be any issue between us.”

Another voice said something, although that almost-understanding she had with the other one didn’t come to her for this voice. It meant nothing, but Edward’s did. She just wanted to…

Edward .

The name came out of nowhere. She still couldn’t understand any of the other confusing sights and sounds that had happened within the last couple minutes, but she understood that this one by the back of the truck was called Edward. She could remember that much, just as she could understand that he would be happy with this revelation.

She stood up at the front of the truck, getting ready to shamble over to him and try to let him know somehow, but she never even took her first step. There was a shot, and the bullet passing through her brain took that name away from her forever.

Edward tried to make it look all the way up until the last second like he was going to ram Horton’s truck head on, then let off the gas and swerved to the left. Unfortunately, it looked like Horton had been expecting that. The trucks almost passed each other, but Horton turned right into Edward’s truck and sliced across its side with the cowcatcher. Edward fought the instinct to hit the brake and instead tried to correct the truck’s path as it swerved with the impact. The truck teetered on two wheels, looking for a moment like it could go either way, and then tipped to its side. Edward threw himself across the seat and over Liddie just as the windshield shattered and showered his back with shards. He yelled obscenities when the truck tipped again as it continued to slide, throwing both him and Liddie to the ceiling. He could feel one of his arms break as Liddie’s full weight fell on it, but he didn’t scream. There was pain, but it wasn’t as much as he thought there should have been. Maybe that was one of the advantages of being a Z7. He still had a zombie’s tolerance for pain.

Somewhere outside he could hear the other truck screech to a halt, followed by the sound of doors opening and slamming and someone, possibly Horton, yelling orders. Edward let Liddie go, and she immediately started moving as though she were trying to stand up while upside down. In any other situation it might have been funny. Edward tried to help her, but her movements were too frantic and confused for him to get a good hold on her.

“Damn it, Liddie, stop squirming around for a second so I can help you. You can’t stand up when you’re upside down.”

She stopped, and he was able to get her into a better position. “Okay, look,” he said. “Just stay put, you got that? Don’t try to move. Whatever you see out there, whatever you hear…and yeah, whatever you smell, don’t try to get out. Do you understand?”

She didn’t give any sign whether she understood or not, but he didn’t have time to reiterate the point. He worked his way out the broken window and took stock of the situation. The truck was between him and Horton, so at the very least he had some cover for the moment. He got to his feet, being sure to stay crouched very low and out of sight, and looked around for the rifle he’d thrown in the back of the truck. It could have been thrown clear from the road, for all he knew, but as he made his way around the side of the truck he found that he’d gotten lucky for a change. The rifle was poking out from under the bed of the truck, and although it looked scratched up it didn’t otherwise look damaged. He grabbed it and gave it a looking over as he made his way to the tailgate. It seemed to be a similar model to Rae’s custom rifle back in Fond du Lac, so he thought he could operate it if needed even with the broken arm. He listened carefully for the sound of anyone coming, but Horton’s truck had stopped some distance away. Edward could hear Horton yelling orders at one other person, but it didn’t sound like they’d come any closer. He poked his head around the side of the truck but immediately pulled it back as someone shot at him.

“Listen up, pervert!” Horton yelled. “Just step away from the truck real slow, and maybe we won’t shoot you like you deserve.”