Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

The farther the truck went into the city the smoother the ride became. They had to take an alternate route around a collapsed overpass at the freeway, but the road after that point looked like it might have been repaved in recent years, although not very well. The buildings continued to look rough and derelict for a time, but after they had travelled about five miles all structures suddenly came to a stop and gave way to a wide expanse of open ground. Edward sat up in the cage and leaned against the bars, trying to get a better idea of what he was seeing. He remembered this area. It had been a few businesses, a couple of factories, and the start of a residential area, but it looked now like it had been all been bulldozed. A half-hearted attempt had been made to clear the open space, although garbage and occasional wood and rubble littered it all. Looking out further down the road he saw that the empty zone was about half a mile wide, and on either side of the road it continued on in a slight curve. He suspected that if he were able to see the entire thing from a bird’s eye view, the no-man’s land would have formed a rough circle.

He saw why the empty zone had been created as the truck approached the other side. A cement wall had been erected around the inner part of the circle, about seven feet high but with fifteen foot towers at regular intervals. Beyond the wall Edward could clearly see more buildings, and these, finally, were as he remembered them. There were the obvious cosmetic changes on some of the more recognizable houses, and here and there were new buildings he didn’t recognize, but everything beyond the wall at least looked like it was being used. Had he seen this place first, he would have never realized anything had gone wrong with the world.

Edward’s heart beat faster. His own home was somewhere in there. He might be able to get some clues here, if only he could get away from Charlie and Ringo.

He absently scratched at his chin as the truck slowed. Whatever strange thing had happened to his skin was starting to itch, but he ignored it. Most of the pain that had plagued him earlier had receded into an occasionally annoying ache, and his thoughts and senses all felt much clearer now. He still didn’t want to look at himself, though. It wasn’t like whatever had affected him was going to clear up any time soon.

The truck came to a full stop at a wooden gate. There was a guard house next to it, and Edward watched as a woman came out and walked to the driver’s side. Her hair was cut short and done up in an unfamiliar hairstyle with pink highlights. She had a rifle in hand, and even though the whole thing was painted pink with silver zebra stripes it still made her look formidable. She looked bored as Ringo rolled down the window, not even bothering to glance at the cage.

“How many you declaring today?” the woman said. She looked like she was in her late twenties and she wore thick glasses. She was chewing something that Edward initially thought was gum until she turned her head and spit out a wad of tobacco-darkened saliva.

“Actually,” Ringo said, “we’re not sure.”

“How the hell could you be not sure? You’re the one that fricking caught them.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, “but we’re not really sure about one of them.” He turned to look through the back window, and when he saw Edward staring back at him his eyes went wide. “Holy shit. Ringo, take a look.”

Both Ringo and the woman turned to look at Edward. The woman raised an eyebrow, but Ringo’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit,” he said, and Charlie nodded at him.

“That’s a really fresh one,” the woman said, taking a step closer to the cage. The zombies took an interest in her and tried to reach through the cage, but Edward stayed back. “Hope you realize no one’s gonna pay jack shit for it.”

“Please,” Edward said to her. “I don’t know what’s going on but you got to let me out of here.”

“Jesus Mary Joseph!” the woman said as she took a leaping step back away from the cage. “That zed just talked!”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we said,” Ringo said. “But that’s not even the freakish part anymore. It actually seems to be healing.”

Edward tried to take this all in. It had already occurred to him that they thought he was a zombie like the others, probably due to his appearance. But he hadn’t known he was healing. He finally took another look at his arms and realized that, even though they still had an unhealthy color to them, the deep wounds and rotted flesh were repairing themselves. With the mysterious healing he also became aware of how incredibly hungry he was, which he supposed made about as much sense as anything else. Of course he would be building up an appetite if his body was healing so fast. That, of course, didn’t explain why the healing was happening so quickly or why his body had needed to heal in the first place.

At least he knew there was no way he could be a zombie, although that didn’t tell him much.

“So what are you going to do with it?” the woman said to Ringo.

“Would you stop calling me ‘it?’“ Edward said. “My name is Edward Schuett. I don’t have a single fucking clue what is going on but I didn’t do anything to deserve being locked up in a fucking cage, so will one of you people just let me the fuck out?”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “Um, hi? How…how are you?”

“I’m in a cage with zombies. How would you be?”

“Okay, this is…unbelievable,” the woman said.

“Yeah, we’re right there with you,” Ringo said. “Could you please open the gate so we can get in and try figuring out what the fuck is going on?”

“Yeah, sure,” the woman said. “But shouldn’t we…you know, let him out?”

“I’m not letting out a zombie to roam free,” Ringo said. “Especially not right at the city gate. I don’t care if he can talk.”

“I’m not a Goddamned zombie!” Edward said. The shout cracked from the strain on his still-rough vocal cords. “I just want to know what the hell is going on!”

The woman looked at Ringo, who shrugged. She moved closer to the cage, being careful to stay out of the grasp of the zombies’ hands, and dropped her voice low. “You said your name was Edward Schuett?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do, okay? I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but I’ll see if I can get some people to come talk to you before these guys can do anything to you, got it?”

He didn’t get it, not really, but he supposed that was better than he would probably get from the two in the front of the truck. He nodded, and the woman went over to the gate to open it. Edward watched her stare at him as the truck passed through and into the city, hoping that someone would start making some sort of sense to this all very soon.

Rae Neuman rested her custom pink rifle on her shoulder as she closed the gate and stared after the truck, attempting to understand what she had just seen. The man in the cage, Edward Schuett, had definitely been a zombie. There was no doubt about that. No living person could have that much rotted away skin and still continue to breathe. But then, a true zombie couldn’t talk. Never. In the almost fifty years since the undead Uprising, no one had ever heard a zed do anything more than moan or hiss.

She’d told the zombie, or man, or whatever he was, that she would do whatever she could to try straightening this out, but she didn’t know where to start. Who the hell was she supposed to call in the event of a talking, apparently sentient zombie? The person to talk to would probably be one of those zombie researchers, but there weren’t any in Fond du Lac anymore. There wasn’t a need. Except out in the boonies, the outer ruins of the old city, zombies were rarely heard or seen. No one worried about them anymore except when it came to entertainment, so there hadn’t been a reason to keep an expert around for a long time.