Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

“Help me,” she whispered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Please… shot.”

Rae walked over to join him. She pointed Spanky at the woman’s chest, but he motioned for her to turn it away.

“Do you think she’s going to die?” Edward asked.

“Probably, unless she thought to have other people like a medic nearby in case she needed them. Wouldn’t bet on it, though.”

“I have a better question, then,” Edward said. “Does she deserve to die?”

“Don’t ask me that,” Rae said. “You’ve got more of a history with her than I do.”

Edward knelt down by Chella’s side. Her breathing looked shallow, and the pool of blood under her still grew. “You were going to have me killed, Chella. Or experimented on, or turned into a weapon, or whatever. Liddie wouldn’t have died if she didn’t want to save me from all that. None of these people would have died if you had just left it alone. All because you thought I was a monster.”

He wasn’t sure if she understood him right now, but he felt the need to continue. “Do you still think that? Am I the monster here?”

Dr. Chella barely managed to croak out the word. “…yes…”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Edward said. “Since in my mind it’s the other way around.”

He took her broken hand, raised it gently to his mouth, and bit.

Rae fidgeted by his side. “Are you sure that was what you wanted to do? Even after everything that has happened, you didn’t strike me as the kind of person that could kill someone.”

“That’s not me killing her. That’s me saving her,” Edward said. Dr. Chella began to shiver, and he left her to finish the change while he helped the others pack up.

As much as Dr. Bloss wanted to stay in Winnebago now that the immediate threat was over, both Edward and Rae decided that would be a bad idea. Even with Dr. Chella gone, both the CRS and Merton would still be looking for them. They were at least able to pack up the most important parts of Dr. Bloss’s research. Then they all headed north.

There was a lot of talk over the next several days about what to do next. Rae kept by her word to help protect everything that Edward and Dr. Bloss intended to do. After all, the attack in Winnebago had been proof enough of what some people would do to get what Dr. Bloss could create. She offered the rest of her crew the chance to leave, but they stayed. They were loyal to Rae down to the last. Edward thought that was pretty impressive for someone who had originally been a lowly gate guard.

The going was tough. Dr. Bloss had to frequently stop off in towns to check on his “contacts,” although he still refused to divulge any further information about them. His contacts at least kept the money flowing. They needed it if they were going to try remaking Dr. Bloss’s lab somewhere else. The journey was even further complicated by the zombie horde that followed them. Edward insisted on bringing every zombie they could find. There was no telling which ones might react to Dr. Bloss’s theoretical treatment. Any chance for bringing just one other person back and giving them a second chance on life was enough for Edward.

Weeks passed, and they continued searching for the right place to stop. When they stopped for the night Rae would often go off by herself to scout ahead, leaving Edward to look after the horde and the others. Sometimes he could sleep, sometimes he couldn’t. He still had occasional memories that mixed in with his dreams, but they no longer had that awful red tint. Sometimes he dreamt of Julia or Dana or Liddie. At first these dreams were nightmares. As time passed, they were not.

It was one of these latter dreams that Rae woke him from one night nearly a month after the events in Winnebago. One moment he was with Liddie, hugging her and wishing things had turned out differently while she assured him everything would be all right in the end. The next Rae was shaking him awake. The sun had just started to rise, but all the others were asleep yet accept for Jojo, who was on guard duty for the horde. All the time they’d spent with Edward had calmed the zombies’ disposition and they could often be allowed out of his presence for hours at a time without starting to look at the rest of the group as a snack, but it still paid to have someone watching and making sure.

“Edward,” Rae said as he sat up from the bedroll he’d laid on the open ground. “I think this is it. I think we’ve found the perfect place.”

Edward followed her without saying anything. He trusted her judgment completely, but he was still surprised when they came over a hill and looked down to where she was talking about. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Edward said. “When we said we were going to find a place for a new lab and possible colony to turn zombies to Z7s, I was kind of thinking…”

“Yes, I’m sure I can guess what you were thinking. But what I’m thinking is that there would be no place more fitting that this. Come on. Tell me I’m not right.”

He couldn’t tell her that. Further in the distance he could see the ruins of yet another town, abandoned to time just like so many other places they had passed, but this was farther away from still occupied towns and cities. There would probably be plenty of supplies and building materials to find there. But the town was not what Rae meant. She meant the huge block of a building immediately at the bottom of the hill. It was the empty remains of an old Walmart.

“It would provide plenty of shelter,” Rae said. “Plenty of space to keep the zombies, and parts of it could be built up into better living areas once there are more Z7s. This could be it. This could be your new zombie colony. What do you say?”

He nodded. All his facial muscles worked into a smile, and for the first time in far too long Edward Schuett laughed.

Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.

Copyright 2012 Derek J. Goodman

Cover art by Christian Dovel

www.PermutedPress.com