Derek Goodman - The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

But she didn’t doubt that she had to do something, and quickly. Ringo sometimes had a good head on his shoulders, but from what little she had seen of Charlie she wouldn’t be surprised if he just shot the zombie—Edward, although it was still hard to think of a zombie as having a name—purely so he wouldn’t have to deal with this.

Rae went into the guard shack and grabbed her cell phone from where she had left it on the window sill. Her boyfriend had given it to her a couple weeks ago as a present to celebrate her new job as a gate guard. The phone made her the envy of all her friends, since so few of them could afford one yet, but she was never quite sure what to do with it. She’d heard from a few old timers that there had once been a time when everyone owned one, and most people had used them all the time. Her generation, however, hadn’t quite gotten used to having them again. Cellular towers and wireless communication had been restored to some parts of the country about fifteen years ago, but here in Wisconsin the technology renaissance had come later. She supposed people in the more populated areas of America would think that meant Rae and all the people here were backwater hicks, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass what they thought. It was her people that had been the ones to take back most of the country from the zeds, doing it all by themselves without the military help that the coasts had, so she figured those stuck up coast bastards could just suck it.

She fiddled with the phone, trying to figure out who she should call to alert about what she had just seen, but nothing came to her. Maybe she was just being a bleeding heart in thinking she needed to call anybody in the first place. Talking or not, Edward was a zed. His kind, if a virus-infected corpse could really be said to have a “kind,” had wiped out three-quarters of the Earth’s population before she had been born. Her parents had always told her stories about the early days of the Uprising, mostly as a way to scare her into not getting out of bed at night when she was supposed to be sleeping. Even though no zombies had gotten past the circular Empty Zone around Fond du Lac since she had been eight, her parents had still taught her how to use rifles and handguns just in case the zombies ever made a resurgence. If either of them had been alive today they would have been horrified at the idea of helping a zombie.

It was easier, however, to not care about a zombie when they were old and rotted and only had a passing resemblance to anything human. Edward looked like a living human, and if his weird regeneration continued at the rate Ringo and Charlie had hinted at, then he wouldn’t even be recognizable as a zed soon. That might not get him treated any different if those two still sold him to the Jamboree, though.

Finally Rae just dialed the first and only number that popped into her head, and her boyfriend Johnny picked up immediately.

“Rae, I know how much you want use your new phone,” Johnny said, “but I don’t think Merton Security is going to smile on the idea of you using it while you’re supposed to be on the job.”

“Hi to you too, sweetie. Gee, that greeting really makes me feel loved.”

“Sorry, but I just know how much you love your job and I wouldn’t want you to do anything to jeopardize it.”

Rae resisted the urge to sigh into her phone. She didn’t love her new job at all, actually, just like she didn’t really want to use her new phone. The phone just seemed decadent to her, a technology her parents had not needed during the Uprising so it couldn’t be that much more important now, despite how popular they were becoming again. And even though gate guard had once been a dangerous and noble profession, it was really pretty useless these days. Sitting in a shack with a kick-ass rifle she never got to use was just boring.

“I’ll keep it short, then,” Rae said. “I just wanted to know if you or anyone else at Merton might still have a phone number of one of those zombie experts that moved away last year.”

“Well, I don’t. I never really had to deal with any of them. But I’m sure their numbers are still on file at the office somewhere. Why?”

“Uh, nothing really, I guess. I just saw something…um, strange.”

“Strange like how?”

“Strange like…well, have you ever heard of a talking zed?”

Johnny was quiet for a few moments. “Um, no. Rae, zombies can’t talk.”

“Right, I know that, but what if one could?”

“They can’t.”

“Well I just saw one doing exactly that, so I guess they can.”

“You’re not drinking while on duty, are you?”

“No, damn it. And this is not a joke either. Two guys off into the ruins getting zeds for the Jamboree just came back in, and one of their zeds was talking. Looked fresher than it should have, too.”

“Maybe it was just so fresh it could still say some random things or something like that.”

“But it was an actual coherent conversation. Almost like it could think and everything.”

“Now you’re just being dumb. That’s completely impossible.”

This time Rae did sigh. Sometimes she just wanted to kick Johnny’s ass when he said things like that. If he didn’t keep her supplied with practice ammo whenever she wanted it she probably would have left him by now.

“I saw it with my own eyes. Something was extremely strange with this zed, and I just thought someone with some sort of expertise should know.”

It was Johnny’s turn to sigh. “I’ll see if I can get a hold of one, alright?” He said his standard “I love yous” and hung up, but Rae didn’t think he was actually going to make any call.

Rae set the phone back down on the window sill and picked up her rifle, holding it close to her chest as she stared out the window and thought. A zombie named Edward Schuett. Academically she always knew that zombies had once been alive, and on rare unfortunate occasions people still contracted the Animator virus and turned into zeds, but most undead that she saw had been that way since before she was born. People like Ringo brought zombies in every so often, but Rae had never thought to wonder what they might have been like in life. She had certainly never wondered what any of them were named.

Now, however, one had a name anyway. Edward. Now that she knew that much, she felt compelled to know more. She picked up the phone again, this time dialing one of her coworkers to see if he could finish her shift in the gate house.

Although Edward knew he should be concerned more about his fate at the moment, he became distracted by the scenery as the truck moved through the city and actually felt some relief at being in a familiar environment. While the world outside the bulldozed circle had looked like Armageddon, here within the new confines of the city life looked almost like it should have. They passed an elementary school, and to his shock there were children playing in the fenced off playground. That was just such a normal thing to happen, and everything he had encountered up until now had been anything but normal. A few of the children saw the truck pass and stopped their playing to watch and point, but Edward didn’t feel awkward about suddenly being the object of so much attention. The existence of children in this strange new world gave him hope, although not for very long. When he thought of them for too long his mind turned to memories of Dana, and his heart sank. Maybe she was still out there somewhere, but from what little he knew so far he didn’t think he could muster much hope. Even if she was out there his little six year old girl wouldn’t be so little anymore. For all he knew, enough time might have passed that she could be a teenager by now. She might not even remember him anymore.