The Reanimation of Edward Schuett

Chapter Twenty Six

Liddie looked in the rearview as the van approached the Stanford outer gates. On the outside, at least, she looked calm and perfectly put together. She had fixed her hair while they had been pulled over, so at least she didn’t look like she’d just attacked a government scientist. This was something she’d learned from her mother, that ability to look like she had everything under control even when things were not at all right. She’d need that once they got to the gate, since on the inside she was scared completely out of her mind.

She’d worked out a cover story with Edward on the way here, and although it had some risky parts, she was still reasonably certain it would hold up. She’d ripped off the patch on his coveralls that said “janitor,” but she’d kept her ID that identified her as a higher official with the CRS. Assuming that they’d made it here in time before CRS security could alert the gate guards, she would be able to just tell them that she was on a research excursion for the CRS to collect data on wild reanimated migratory patterns. It was a legitimate study that CRS scientists had been working on for some time, and hopefully it wouldn’t draw that much attention. She could just say Edward was a maintenance assistant going with her to fix some equipment, although there was a possibility someone would question why they were going out so late. The reanimated population was low enough these days that going outside the city limits in the daylight was relatively safe, but night was another story. Hopefully she could convince the guard that some field equipment needed immediate service or else it would compromise some experiment. She just had to hope the guard wasn’t smart enough to ask why they weren’t bringing armed guards with them.

They stopped at the gate booth and waited for a guard to come to the window and ask what they were doing, but even though there was a light on inside nobody came to them. Liddie peeked her head out the van’s window into the booth only to find the guard fast asleep on a chair.

“That’s just ridiculous,” Liddie whispered to Edward. “A reanimated could just walk right up the gate to find a way in and this guy would never even know.”

“Or a reanimated could walk up and find a way out,” Edward said.

“Maybe,” she said. She opened the door and, leaving the engine running, approached the open window of the gate booth. She supposed she was lucky the night was warm enough that the guard hadn’t closed the window. This meant she could probably just reach in and hit the switch to open the gate, then jump back in the van and hope to get out before the guard could wake up and realize what was going on. It would be risky, though. If the guard heard the noise and woke up before the gate was all the way open, he could still shut it again before the van had a chance to get through. She had to wonder what her mother might do in this situation.

My mother wouldn’t take any shit from someone like this, Liddie thought, then smiled.

“Hey!” Liddie yelled through the window. The guard startled awake and almost fell out of his chair. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The guard tried to blink the sleep from his eyes. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just…can I help you?”

“You can help by giving me the name of your supervisor.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m on an urgent errand to fix a reanimated tracking monitor so that thousands of people in this city can sleep at night knowing they’re safe from the undead, and just what the hell do I find? Our first line of defense sleeping at his post.”

“Excuse me, but just who the fuck…” Liddie flashed her CRS ID before he could finish that thought, although she did it quickly enough that he couldn’t see the name. “Oh. Oh shit. Please, it was just a really quick nap.”

“A really quick nap? Well it would have been a really long nap if a reanimated had gotten past that gate and bitten you. I’m going to see you fired for this.”

“No, please, I swear it won’t happen again!”

A sudden flash of inspiration came to Liddie. “Your superiors, if they want to communicate with you they use a walkie-talkie?”

The guard showed her the thumb-sized device hanging from his belt. “Right here, ma’am.”

“Give it to me. I want to speak with them myself.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I’m not supposed to let anyone else use it.”

“Do you want me to also report that you were trying to prevent me from letting your superiors know about your mistake? Because I’m sure that will make you look so much better in their eyes.”

The guard cringed, then handed her the walkie-talkie. Liddie took it and turned back to the van.

“Hey!” the guard said. “You can’t leave here with that.”

“I’ll be reporting you from out in the field. I’m already running dangerously far behind because I had to wake your lazy ass up. I’ll return shortly and you’ll be getting it back. In the meantime, if I were you I would start trying to come up with an excuse that won’t get you fired.”

The gate was already opening as she got back into the van. Edward stared at her wide-eyed, but with a smile. “Okay, I didn’t catch all of that from here, but what I did catch was pretty impressive.”

“My mother’s training strikes again,” Liddie said.

“What is that you took from him?”

“His walkie-talkie.” She handed it to him, then drove through the open gate.

“This is a walkie-talkie? That’s even more impressive.”

“What, didn’t they have walkie-talkies in your time?”

“Yeah, but they weren’t anything like… wait, what do we need a walkie-talkie for, anyway? Can they maybe track us with this like they could the phone?”

Liddie shook her head. They’d tossed the phone out the window soon after the mysterious call. As much as they would have liked to try getting a hold of the strange old man again, she knew it would be too risky. “These models are cheap throwaway types. Not even worth putting trackers in them. And I took it because I think we can use it to fake out our pursuers for a while. When the CRS security realizes we’re gone, they’ll likely contact all the gate stations to be on the look out for us. You can just pretend to be the guard and say you haven’t seen anything. By the time we’re out of range they will still be thinking we’re somewhere in the city.”

“Good idea,” Edward said. Liddie nodded, trying to keep a confident outward attitude. On the inside, even now that they appeared to be home free, she was petrified. The obvious problem now seemed out of the way, but that meant she now had to face exactly what she had done tonight. She had thrown away everything she’d ever known in her life. Her career, her family. Admittedly, she hadn’t had much beyond that. Her friends were more like acquaintances that she occasionally met for drinks without sharing anything more than inane conversation. Her apartment had been sparsely furnished and contained few possessions. Yet it hadn’t felt like her life had been empty. Her career with the CRS had felt meaningful, like she was making an important contribution to the continued existence of the human race.

She looked over at Edward, who was still staring at the walkie-talkie with wonder. At what point had she made the decision that his life was worth more than all that? From a purely logical perspective, it seemed crazy. He was only one person, and if she had stayed at the CRS she could have gone on contributing to research that could have helped so many more. Now that her mother was very likely fired and going to jail, that meant that Dr. Chella would be in charge, and Liddie was pretty certain she didn’t care a lick about helping anybody but her own reputation.

But that was really a narcissistic way of thinking about things, wasn’t it? Had Liddie’s contribution really been more than anyone else’s? More than once she had felt like she hadn’t really belonged there. She wasn’t a scientist. She’d simply been a bureaucrat making sure all the chemicals and testing equipment had been in the right place. She hadn’t been helping anybody. Now was her chance to do some real good for a real person.

Briefly she thought to herself that Edward was more than just any old person, that he was someone special, but she pushed that thought away for now. That awkward moment in the elevator had been enough to tell her he didn’t quite want anything to do with that. At least, not yet.

“Okay, so, we need to make a plan,” Liddie said.

“Well, the first part of any plan we come up with has to be get as far away from Stanford as possible,” Edward said.

“Yes, but what after that? Do we go find this guy that just called us?”

“I certainly don’t know what else we would do at this point.”

“But can we trust him? How do we know it’s not some sort of trap? The CRS could have found a way to make that call and have us think it came from somewhere else.”

“But why would they send us all the way to Illinois then? If it was the CRS they could spring a trap on us much closer, I would think.”

“A trap from someone else?” Liddie asked. “Is there anyone else you could think of that would want to get their hands on you.”

“Sure, maybe, if anyone else knew I existed. It’s not like any of those conspiracy theorists you were talking about would know your private number.”

“So we’re going to say this guy is the real thing. But saying he created you? That can’t be true, can it?”

“How would I know? For all I know I was made a Z7 by a secret conspiracy of Democrat lawn gnomes.”

“What’s a lawn gnome?” Liddie asked.

“Never mind. I’m just putting my vote in for Illinois. Do you have a vote for anywhere else?”

“No. It’s not like I’ve actually left Stanford enough to know anything about anywhere else, so Illinois might as well be as good a place as any. The only problem then is how are we going to get there?”

“Are there still roads that will take us there, or were they left alone to break up for all these years?”

“A little of both,” Liddie said. She gestured at the terrain around them. Immediately beyond Stanford there was an empty zone, just like Edward had probably seen in Fond du Lac, but beyond that the landscape was much different. Any buildings that had once existed out here had all been bulldozed and the natural landscape had been allowed to grow back. The only thing that didn’t grow out here were large trees. Every so often the area cities would send teams out to trim the trees back, making it far harder for the reanimated to hide so near the city. Further beyond they could both see the lights of other nearby cities. Unlike the cities in mid-country, the cities on the coasts tended to be much closer together, and the roads between them were meticulously maintained.

“Anything that didn’t lead anywhere important has been left to nature over all these years,” Liddie said, “but major interstate highways are still sort of kept up. Or at least they’re supposed to be. Most people with half a brain avoid travelling over land, so sometimes the local government doesn’t bother to keep up with them as they should.”

“So we should be able to drive the whole way?”

“More or less.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, there’s still the problem of gas. Also food. Shelter we shouldn’t have to worry about too much. That’s why I grabbed a van instead of one of the cars. I figure it’s easier to live out of a van.”

Edward looked like he was thinking about that. “About how long of a drive would this be?”

“I don’t really know off the top of my head. How far is it? Maybe two thousand miles? I suppose we could probably make it in two days or so, if we don’t run into any trouble on the way.”

“Okay, so how’s this thing’s gas mileage?”

“Terrible. It only gets 94 miles per gallon.”

Edward made a choking sound.

“Are you okay?” Liddie asked.

“Yeah, I’m, uh, fine. It’s just…94 miles per gallon. Holy shit.”

“Sorry about that. We’d probably get better gas mileage on a riding lawnmower.”

“Um, right. So how many gallons per tank?”

“Only ten on this thing. Nearly a full tank now, so if we really want to use this thing the whole way then we’d need to find fuel at least twice somewhere along our route.”

“Do you think we can do that?”

“We’ll have to actually go into some of the cities, but I suggest we do that as little as possible. Those photos they showed of you on the news were pretty grainy, but all it takes is one mid-country hillbilly to realize who you are and start taking potshots at us.”

“And I suppose we’ll have the same issue with food.”

“Probably, but we may just have to go without that as much as possible. See, our biggest problem now that I think about it might be money.”

“Do you not have enough?”

“I’ve got some pay cards, but most of them are official cards in my name that can be traced. The few generic pay cards I have might be enough, but some of these mid-country hick towns don’t even use the same currency as the coasts.”

Edward nodded. He was quiet for a long time before speaking again. “Do we actually have a chance to pull this off?”

Liddie tried not to hesitate in her response. “We’ll be fine. It will be nothing but a smooth ride from here.”

“Are you lying?”

“Maybe.” She looked at him, being sure to make eye contact in the hopes that he knew she meant this. “But I will do everything in my power to help you.”

He smiled and put his hand between them where she could easily reach. After only a moment she took it. This time he didn’t let go right away.

Chapter Twenty Seven

They drove for three hours before they finally had to stop. According to the van’s built in map device—something that concerned Edward at first, since he thought a GPS satellite could possibly be used to track them, but Liddie assured him that modern systems didn’t work like that; Edward simply had to take her word for it—they pulled over somewhere in the Tahoe Forest. By this point they were pretty certain they weren’t being followed. The expected call had come in on the walkie-talkie about half an hour out of Stanford, which was good since Liddie said they were almost out of range. Edward had pretended to be the guard just like they had planned, and they hadn’t had any reason to believe the CRS even thought they were out of the city yet. It appeared they had gotten out free and clear, at least for now.

They had to sleep, though. Liddie looked pretty ragged by this time, and she wasn’t exactly making straight lines down the road. Edward wasn’t so concerned with her crossing over into the next lane, since they had yet to see another vehicle anywhere past Sacramento, but she hadn’t been kidding about how bad some of the roads had gotten. All it would take was for her to sleepily hit a deep pothole while going seventy-five for them to go spinning end over end into the wilderness. Edward would have taken over, except not only did the van have several controls he was unfamiliar with, but he also hit one of his sporadic tired periods at around the same time. They pulled just far enough off the road where no one travelling by would see them, locked all the doors in case there were any reanimated in the area, and both fell asleep in separate seats.

It didn’t take long before the world was red again. There were other forms around him, but not as many as he sometimes remembered. He couldn’t count to be sure, but he knew this was a very weak horde. Beyond that he didn’t know much of anything.

Several of the forms around him were familiar, inasmuch as anything could really be familiar to him, although one was more so than all the others. He didn’t know why, but he felt compelled to keep close to this one. It just felt right. Sure, it felt right to stay near any form, but this one was…special? He didn’t actually know that word, but he knew the feeling. The honey scent this one gave off felt unique to him. No other form seemed to notice it. If he had been capable of feelings, he would have been proud that he could feel it when no other could.

They were in a field, although he could see a squat building in the distance. He no longer had the capability of trying to figure out what that building was, nor did he much care. The horde had gotten the scent of something meaty, something without the correct scent, and they were making their way toward it. There was a very faint whiff of sweetness on the wind, others like him that had caught that same prey-scent and moved toward it. With a few subtle changes in that distant odor, he started moving in a different direction, still going toward the prey yet now in a zigzag pattern. He had no idea why he should do this, but he wasn’t the only one who followed along. All the other forms in his small horde, including that one he wouldn’t stray from, followed suit. No questioning, no thought, no attempts at understanding it.

The first shot echoed through the air, and the head of one of the forms nearby exploded in a shower of skull fragments and brain matter.

The form collapsed, and the odor it gave off was no longer so sweet or enticing. It was offensive, putrid. It made his head hurt. He tried to move away from it, as did every other form around him, but as soon as he was far enough away from it the distant sweet smell took over again. Back to zigzagging. No stopping. Must follow the horde. So he did. All others around him did. Back and forth, getting closer to the target.

Another head exploded. Again, all the forms attempted to scatter, and again the scent demanded otherwise. Almost time. He didn’t know what it was almost time for, but he knew it was true and he obeyed. He looked at that familiar form, almost as though he was reassuring himself it was still there. It looked at him at the same time.

The next shot was not the clean headshot that had taken out the others. One moment he was looking at a familiar face, something he still felt some phantom attachment to, and then the next its entire lower jaw was gone. He heard the sound of the gunshot only as teeth and destroyed flesh pelted his face. Darkened blood splattered over him, but he noticed none of that. All he noticed were the form’s eyes. He saw something change in them at that moment, but he lacked the ability to understand what that meant. They went wide, staring at him, and then the form dropped. The awful stench it gave off was somehow so much worse than what had come from the others. It offended him in a way the others hadn’t. He felt something from inside, something long forgotten and hidden, wrestle to come to the surface as phantom emotions of grief and horror. All of it wanted to come out in a scream of rage, but all he managed was a low moan.

Somewhere nearby there was a scream, followed by the sound of flesh ripping and tearing. The other part of the horde, the one that had been directing his group on what had basically been a suicide distraction run, had found the shooter. But he didn’t care. He was missing his chance for nourishment, and the sickly sweet odor on the breeze invited him to join, but he couldn’t just yet. He felt compelled to stay here, next to the one that for some reason he didn’t understand he had needed. He knew something was gone, something he could never get back, but his mind simply couldn’t comprehend what was missing.

Then the moment was gone. He didn’t remember why he was standing here, looking down at just another corpse. The world was full of them now, so why would this one be special? He wandered off to join the others, always following the lead of the slight hint of honey in the air.

Edward woke with tears streaming down his cheeks. It took him several seconds before his brain caught up with what his heart already knew, and he realized that he had just remembered the death, or at least the second death, of his wife.

He was draped over the second row of seats in the van, while Liddie snored softly on the back row. He wasn’t sure if he’d been making any noise as he’d cried in his sleep, but at least it hadn’t disturbed her. However, it didn’t feel right to be here next to her at this moment. It felt disloyal to Julia’s memory, almost like he was…well, like he was cheating on her.

There weren’t a whole lot of other places he could go, though. It was either in here or out there, where other zombies wandered around looking either for more zombies to group up with or prey to feed that hunger they didn’t quite understand. But Edward didn’t actually have anything to fear from them, did he? To them, and indeed to most of the world, he was no different. They accepted him among them where no one else would.

He was very careful not to make any noise as he got up from the seat and slid open the back door. He closed it again softly but firmly. Edward wondered for a moment if he should open it again and lock it from the inside, ensuring that nothing would be able to get in and get Liddie, but he didn’t think zombies would be able to open the door. Or, at least, one or two zombies wouldn’t be able to open the door. From what he could remember, a large number of zombies might have been coordinated enough to figure it out. But a quick sniff seemed to confirm there weren’t that many in the vicinity. There was…one. Somewhere out in the forest. Somewhere near. After one last check to make sure Liddie was asleep and content, he walked off in the direction of the pheromones he sensed out among the trees.

The terrain was rough. There wasn’t any path out here, not even any game trails that he could find. Thick bushes obscured the ground, and several times he nearly tripped on exposed roots or animal burrows. At one point he even stubbed his toe hard enough that he thought he broke it, but the throbbing pain disappeared far quicker than it should have. Pain. That was something he never remembered in any of the dreams. As a zombie, a full-blown one complete with menacing groan and shambling walk, he hadn’t felt the holes in his flesh or the slow rotting of his limbs. And he certainly hadn’t felt any emotional pain. That one moment when he had seen Julia die was a rare exception.

He wiped the tears from his cheeks, but more replaced them. This was what he got for being more human again. Pain. Loss. Fear of being caught and killed. Was this really so great? He might have been better off if he had never come back. He would still be in the Fond du Lac area somewhere, wandering aimlessly looking for nothing except the occasional prey. It would be a pure and simple life nothing like this. He wouldn’t feel regret at the idea that he had killed people over and over for decades. He wouldn’t feel sorrow that his wife—and yes, he had to face reality now, probably his daughter as well—was long dead. He wouldn’t be on the run. Yes, there would always be the possibility of someone wandering out in the middle of nowhere with a gun coming up and shooting him in the head. He might end up at the Jamboree Rae had talked about. And he wouldn’t have destroyed Liddie’s life and career.

He stopped as the ground in front of him dropped off into a gully. There were too many trees to allow much moonlight to filter through here, but there was still enough light that he could see the gully’s lone occupant. It was a woman, perhaps a little fresher looking than most zombies he had seen, but most definitely not alive. Her clothes looked like they had started out as a business suit, although they were too coated with grime and dead leaves for Edward to be sure. One whole side of her face had been skinned, probably from the fall into the gully, and there were even places where the bone showed through. She wandered back and forth at the bottom of the gully, occasionally trying to walk up the side and falling back in. Edward had no idea how long she had been here or how she got here. Who had she been?, Edward wondered. Had she had a family? Children? No family at all except for a house full of cats? Did someone out there miss her? Or did no one care?

She tried to go up the gully wall again and failed. She just couldn’t grasp the idea that she couldn’t walk straight up it or that she might need to hold onto some of the bushes with her hands. Edward snorted. This was what he had been nostalgic for just a few minutes earlier. A life stripped of all meaning. He’d been the incredibly lucky one. He’d been given his life back. It wasn’t the same one he’d known, and it never would be again. But he could build a new one.

He started to turn back in the direction of van, but the woman moaned and he looked back. She stared up at him, and the pheromone scent on the air changed. Join, it said without words. Become. Hunt. Follow. He didn’t feel that same moment of compulsion he had back with the boy in the CRS, but he could still feel all the subtle variations. On some level he could still understand them all, too. He hadn’t been able to use that understanding in any effective way at the time, but he hadn’t really given it any thought, either. It had just been a knee-jerk reaction. Now that he was alone, though, and didn’t have to worry about this zombie potentially doing something to Liddie, maybe he could control the scents a little better. Maybe he could actually use them to communicate, if anyone could really be said to communicate with the undead.

He concentrated on the pheromones. Now that Liddie had told him Chella’s theories, he found it easier to picture them in his head. A chemical floating on the air currents, coming from him, wafting to the zombie, being picked up with whatever those special receptors were in her nasal cavities. He concentrated on all that, and he pushed. The effect was immediate, just like it had been back in that room, and the zombie woman reacted in the same way. She froze, completely confused by the garbled message she received. Well, at least he knew how to do that. He could stop a zombie dead in its tracks. But could he do more? It had never seemed in any of his dreams like there was one zombie in charge, more like a consensus of all zombies. Some might want to do one thing, some might want to do another, but the strongest pheromones, the ones released by the most zombies, were the ones that all others obeyed as though they had wanted to do that same thing all along.

Strength, he realized, was the issue. The zombie down there in the gully wanted him to come down and join her. All he had to do was figure out how to tell her to do something else, and make it stronger.

He closed his eyes and let the memories come back to him. There was one freshest in his mind, one he’d rather not think about, but there was still something useful there. He’d received an order and he had followed it, despite the order putting him in danger. He thought he could remember the shape of it in his mind, the slight scent, the way it had touched him. He could recreate that. Just remember everything about it. Remember everything…and then push out.

He opened his eyes and looked down at the zombie. She was trying to get up the gully wall again, and although she still couldn’t quite make it she at least made it a little farther up before she fell down. Mostly that was because instead of trying to climb it straight up, she was moving at it at an angle, a zigzag.

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.

Chapter Twenty Eight

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.

The van skidded to a halt at an angle, and for one second it tilted at an odd angle on the left two wheels. Then the van thumped back down to all four, and everything went silent except for their ragged gasps of breath.

Edward spoke first. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Liddie said. “You?”

“Yeah.”

They sat there for a few more seconds in silence before Edward undid his seat belt and opened his door.

“Wait, where are you going?” Liddie asked.

“To check on the damage,” Edward said. He got out, and after a few more moments to catch her breath Liddie followed.

Liddie wrinkled her nose as she looked back at the highway behind them. Skid marks went back for longer than she could estimate, but that wasn’t the most prominent new feature on the asphalt. A streak of gore trailed behind the van for at least forty feet. Most of it was completely unrecognizable, but here and there Liddie thought she could see parts that might have once been ribs or internal organs. Off the side of the road a complete arm lay in the dirt.

“Oh dear God,” Liddie said. “It’s like they came out of nowhere.” She said it to Edward, but he wasn’t listening. He walked a bit off the road and gestured to the three remaining reanimated. They’d shambled in three different directions, but now that the initial moment of shock was over they all walked toward each other again, and once they were all within ten feet of each other they started shambling back to the road, directly toward the van.

“Oh hell,” she said. “Get back in the van, quick.”

“We don’t have anything to worry about from them,” Edward said. His voice was so soft she could barely hear it over the wind.

“But they’re coming right for us.”

“They smell prey,” he said, “but that’s not their biggest emotion right now. They’re scared. We scared them.”

“Edward, they don’t have emotions.”

“No, I guess not really. Not completely. But they do have something.”

He stared intently at the three, and they all stopped. Liddie remembered the way the reanimated had frozen during Dr. Chella’s experiment, but they stopped for longer this time. They actually stared at Edward, then turned away.

“Edward? Did you just do that?” Liddie asked.

“Yes. They still smell you, but they no longer think of you as prey. Or at least I think that’s what I told them. I’m still not really sure.”

It didn’t matter. Whatever they thought, if they could be said to think at all, it still kept them walking in the other direction. They made no sign of turning back.

“That is really eerie,” Liddie said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“It’s rather new for me, too,” Edward said. “And I’m still not even sure I’m doing it right.”

“Come on,” Liddie said. “We’ll need to clean off the van before we—”

“Not yet,” Edward said. “There’s something else.”

He walked back down the road, but Liddie couldn’t tell why at first. Even Edward looked a little lost. He kept glancing at the side of the road, bending down to take a closer look at the bits of gore left behind by the exploding reanimated, and even occasionally sniffing the air. He finally went completely off the road at right about the place where the van had hit the reanimated, going twenty feet out into the desert to stoop next to some scrub bushes. Liddie followed, not sure what he was looking at until she was almost next to him.

“Is it dead?” Liddie asked.

“Oh yes,” Edward whispered. The last reanimated, the one she’d hit but hadn’t seen, lay in the dust. Its entire body was twisted at a terrible angle, and now that she was closer she could see that she’d asked a stupid question. Its head and chest were completely caved in so that Liddie couldn’t even tell if it had once been a man or a woman. Its clothes looked like little more than rags, although its denim jeans seemed to have held up remarkably well over the years.

“So we don’t need to worry about it,” Liddie said. She turned to go back to the van, but Edward stopped her.

“Liddie, wait. I need your help.”

“With what?”

“With burying him.”

“What? Why?”

Edward stood up and glared at her. “What do you mean, why?”

“It’s just a reanimated.”

Edward reached down and felt around at the reanimated’s waist. He apparently found what he was looking for in one of the pockets and pulled it out, showing it to Liddie. It was a nylon wallet, badly worn with age but still intact. “If he was just a zombie, then why would he need this?”

“He probably just had it on him when he died. Most zombies probably did.”

“Liddie, do you seriously mean to tell me that you still don’t get this?” He opened the wallet and started pulling things out to hand to her. “Look at these. Look at all of these.”

She looked at each one in turn. There were a couple of pay cards of the early design, the kinds they’d stopped making when she was just a kid. There were places on their backs for signatures, but the ink had long since been smeared away. There was a condom, its silver wrapper broken through in a few places to show the crumpled and brittle latex inside. There were some pieces of paper that Liddie didn’t recognize at first, but after closer inspection realized had to be battered old-style currency. A penny with a hole in it that had been tucked deep into one of the wallet’s pockets. A scrap of yellowed paper with the hastily scrawled words “For the birthday, Sat.,” followed by a telephone number. A folded photograph so faded that Liddie had to hold right up to her face to see what might be a young woman with long hair holding a dog. And the last thing Edward pulled out, a laminated card which he kept a hold of and read it out to her.

“Timothy North,” he said. “Apparently from Seattle, Washington. This driver’s license expired, what, twenty-eight years ago? A long way from home, isn’t he? How do you think he got all the way into the Nevada desert?”

“Well, reanimated migration patterns being what they are…”

“Damn it, Liddie, stop thinking like you’re still in the CRS just for one second and think about who this man was. Because that’s what he was. A man. With a family, probably. Look at all that stuff in his wallet. Don’t you see any story there? Can’t you picture this man maybe going on vacation to Las Vegas or something? Maybe he had his girlfriend with him. Maybe they were going to elope, get married in some cheesy little chapel where the guy doing the ceremony is an Elvis impersonator. Anything like that, because whether any of that is true or not, this man had a story. It’s a story that got cut short. But what if this guy in Illinois is the reason I became a Z7? What if he can do that again? That means this man’s story could have started up again, but now it won’t. And because of that, excuse me if I’m going to take a moment to mourn him, because this man could have just as easily been me.”

He took all the contents of the wallet back from her and carefully placed each one back where he had found it except for the driver’s license. Then he folded the wallet back up, put it back in the reanimated’s pocket, and got to his knees to dig a hole next to the body with his hands.

“Edward, don’t do this,” Liddie said.

Edward turned to her with a look of genuine anger. “Look, at this point I really don’t care if—”

“You’ll rip your hands up if you try to dig like that,” Liddie said, and Edward’s expression softened. “Let’s go back to the van first and see if there’s anything we can use as a shovel.”

They were able to pull apart a couple pieces of plastic from the interior of the van. They made terrible shovels and the grave ended up being only a foot deep, but it was enough to satisfy Edward. He added in what pieces he could find of the other reanimated, although neither of them could stomach doing that for long, and placed them next to the body. They then covered it up and used one of the makeshift plastic shovels as a grave marker. As a final gesture Edward leaned the driver’s license next to the marker. It wasn’t the kind of memorial that would last long enough for anyone else to ever find it, but for now at least they could both see that this was the final resting place of Timothy North, whoever he may have been.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Even though their route took them right past Salt Lake City, they didn’t try to go in. Considering the shape the van was in after the accident, they figured that stopping anywhere they didn’t have to might result in a whole lot of unwanted attention. It didn’t seem like it would be much of a problem, considering they thought they were in good shape until they at least got through Wyoming. They had enough fuel to go for a while, and they’d bought enough extra at Zappy’s that, as long as they ate sparingly, they would have enough until the morning. It was still a risk, considering the onboard map said there wouldn’t be any communities on their route after this until they reached Laramie, but Liddie told Edward it was a risk they should take. After all, Salt Lake was a mid-country city with a reputation for taking matters into their own hands, and if they recognized Edward as the Z7 they certainly wouldn’t wait for any official authorities to pick him up.

Neither of them noticed the first problems with the van until they started through the Rocky Mountains. Edward thought he heard the engine cough a little, but the noise didn’t repeat for long enough that he almost started to think it was his imagination. As the roads became steeper the noise occurred more frequently. By the time they had nothing surrounding them but large ledges of rock on one side and steep drops into pine forests on the other, they both knew they were in serious trouble.

They pulled over for a while for Edward to take a look under the hood, but that didn’t do them much good. Edward only had a very basic idea of how to fix a car, just enough that he had been able to keep his family’s car going long enough for payday to roll around so he could get someone else to fix it properly. Even that much knowledge wouldn’t help at all here, though. For starters, the van didn’t have anything in the way of emergency tools except for the spare tire and a jack. Vehicles like this had never been intended to go out this far from civilization, way beyond the motor pool and the CRS’s own mechanics. And even if they did have things to fix it with, Edward wouldn’t know where to start. This thing was fifty years beyond anything he had ever messed around with, and many of the components and gadgets under the hood were completely unrecognizable to him. Liddie couldn’t help out, either. All her expertise had been in administration, with a little bit of knowledge for scientific equipment. This kind of thing had always been done for her. At no time in her life had she even needed to change a flat tire.

Even with so little idea of car mechanics between them, it was obvious to see what had happened. From somewhere under various wires and tubes Edward pulled a putrid green finger, and it looked like there might be other pieces still in there. When they’d smashed the zombie, not all of it had ended up on the road and windshield. Some of it had gone through the front grill or under the severely dented hood. Edward took some time removing everything he could find, but several of the auto parts looked like they had been worn or broken from sharing their already cramped space with rotting body parts.

They briefly debated what to do. There was nothing else they could do but continue along and hope none of the damage was severe enough to strand them before they got to Laramie.

Through most of the Rockies, Edward thought fortune had smiled on them. It wasn’t until they started coming back down again out of the mountains that the simple engine coughs became more like burps, and soon were accompanied by groans and screeches. Liddie winced at every noise.

“How much further do we have until Laramie?” Edward asked when the first barely-noticeable tendril of smoke appeared at the edge of the hood.

“Thirty miles,” Liddie said. “Or at least I think. Whatever’s happening with the hood, I think it’s messing up the computer system, too. The map keeps shifting on the screen.”

Thirty miles. Edward nodded. They could still make that. Even if the van broke down before they made it there, it should still be close enough that they could walk there. Or at least he could walk there. Unfortunately, Liddie might be a different story. The land around them was mountainous with very little else on the landscape except grass and the highway. There weren’t many places she could go for cover if zombies were around, and with night approaching again she might not see them coming. He could try keeping them away, but he still didn’t trust his strange little pheromone ability enough to test her life with it. Even worse, they’d been eating and drinking sparingly all day. That didn’t leave them with a lot of energy to head out for another thirty miles on foot. Edward was pretty certain he could manage if he had to, since the CRS had tested his abilities to continue on for a time without food or water, but again Liddie didn’t have that advantage.

“Just keep going,” Edward said. “Maybe we can still make it.”

In response, the van made a very loud and unhappy thump from under the hood. The smoke immediately got much worse.

“Shit,” Edward said.

“Keep trying to go?” Liddie asked.

“That depends,” Edward said. “Does this model of van have any known tendency to explode?”

“Um, there might have been a recall at one point…”

“No, you know what? It’s probably much better if I don’t know. Looks like this is all she wrote. Pull over.”

Liddie pulled over to the shoulder and killed the ignition. There was a noise like something breaking under the hood. Edward seriously doubted that anything would happen if she tried turning the key again.

“Okay, so now what?” Edward asked.

Liddie stared at the blank monitor on the dashboard where the map had been. “Well, we sure are not going to be getting to Illinois any time soon.”

“And Laramie?” he asked. “Any chance we’ll find a way to continue on from there?”

“I don’t really know,” Liddie said. “It depends if someone has a vehicle we can buy with what little money we have, which I don’t think is likely. And that would only be if the residents are friendly to outsiders.”

“Do you have any reason to believe they wouldn’t be?”

“This is mid-country. No one is friendly to outsiders. But I can’t recall hearing about anything worse than normal from around here. I guess we really won’t know one way or the other until we actually make it there.”

“Do you think they would recognize me there?” Edward asked.

“No more or less reason than anywhere else,” Liddie said. “I don’t know. Is there anything you can do to make yourself look less like you?”

“Nothing more than what I’m already doing,” he said as he rubbed his chin. He hadn’t shaved since the escape from Stanford, but he only barely had any stubble. That was one of the bizarre little details of being a Z7, apparently. Before, he’d been the kind of person who could get five o’clock shadow half an hour after shaving. Now it took days before there was enough hair on his face to bother going over it with a razor.

“Guess it will have to be enough,” Liddie said. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Edward said, gesturing at the sky behind them. The sun was already low over the mountains.

“Maybe not,” she said. “For all we know, if we come in after dark they’ll mistake us for reanimated and aim for our heads. But what are we even going to do until then?”

“We’ve got a little bit of food left,” he said, “but maybe we should leave that until the morning. You know, make sure we’re as full as we can be before the walk. Thirty miles on foot is not exactly going to be easy.”

Liddie nodded. “So what then?”

“We should probably use the van again as shelter tonight, but for now it should be okay if we build a fire, shouldn’t it?”

“Won’t that attract reanimated?”

“I’ll be able to tell if any are coming, and maybe even get them to go away. Come on, what do you say? We can use it to keep warm for a while, maybe even find a stick we can sharpen and roast stale hamburger patties over an open flame.”

Liddie smiled. “Like they used to do back in your time when people went camping?”

“Yeah, just like that. Well, no, except for the hamburger patty thing. Not exactly traditional camping food.”

“Do you even know how to start a fire?”

“I know how to pretend I know how to start a fire. Does that count?”

Liddie laughed, and they both got out of the van to search the terrain for burnable wood. It wasn’t easy, but after some searching Liddie found the very old remains of a wooden fence that might have once marked the borders of someone’s property. They brought it back to the road and set it up on the shoulder, being sure to keep it far enough away from the grass to prevent a brushfire. Actually lighting it was a hassle. Edward remembered seeing people start fires in various outdoorsy ways on television and in movies, and he even had a vague recollection of some of the tips he’d been taught back when he was a boy in Cub Scouts, but none of it was easy. It took them both a long time of messing around with the wood and cussing it out before they finally got a moderate fire going. Liddie actually went as far to skewer one of the burgers, bun and all, on a stick they had found. She thought the idea was hilarious.

To Edward’s surprise, he couldn’t help but smile along with her. He had to admit it. This was actually kind of fun. For the moment they could forget why they were out here in the first place and all the bad things that had happened up until this moment. The CRS seemed like a long time ago, and all the obstacles that were still in their path felt far off. As they sat side by side in front of the fire, watching the sun vanish behind the Rocky Mountains while eating their ridiculous burgers-on-a-stick, Edward actually felt a little bit at peace.

“You want the rest of this?” Liddie asked as she pulled the final hamburger from her stick and fished the meat out from the well-done bun.

“Sure.” He took it and ate it slowly, staring all the while at Liddie as she licked ketchup from her fingers. She smiled at him and watched him right back as she ate the bun. They were both sitting cross-legged, and Edward suddenly became aware that she was close enough for their knees to touch. It gave him a little thrill to have her so close. She saw where he was looking and put a hand on his knee.

“Is this really what camping was like back then?” she asked.

“Kind of. I didn’t get to do it a lot. I’d always hoped to get out and do it more once Dana got a little older. Do people not do this at all anymore?”

“Far too dangerous,” Liddie said. “I wouldn’t dare sit out here in the open, in the dark, if you weren’t around to do that thing. Have you had to use it at all, yet?”

“A zombie moved by somewhere to the north of us a while ago,” he said. “But I think the wind was wrong for it to get a whiff of us.”

“It’s refreshing,” she said, “being away from all the people. Being alone.” Something about the soft way she said the words made him look into her eyes. She stared back, and Edward felt a flutter in his chest. He hadn’t felt anything like this since he’d first started dating Julia, that moment of anticipation when he thought a relationship was about to take a new, unexpected, yet welcome turn. She leaned closer, just enough to give him a hint at what she wanted, and he matched the movement. Closer together, so close, but Edward couldn’t quite make himself move across those vital last inches. He wanted to, he really did. The thought of Julia was still there, though. His wife, the one he’d never been able to even give a funeral.

Something about him must have given away his thoughts, because Liddie leaned away and the moment was broken. “You’re still not ready, are you?”

“For a moment there I thought I was. But I guess maybe I’m not.”

Liddie nodded and scooted a few inches away from him. Edward felt a small emptiness the instant she moved away. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

“What happens after we get to Winnebago?”

“I don’t know. Unless we can find some sort of ride in Laramie, that might just be a long time off yet.”

“Suppose its not. Suppose we luck out and get a vehicle and make it all the way to Winnebago by tomorrow night. What happens then?”

Edward shrugged. “We find this man and hope it’s not all some sort of weird trap, and hopefully he can give me some answers.”

“All right, assume that. We’re there, he has all the answers. And after that?”

He frowned. “Liddie, I’m not sure I get what kind of answer you’re looking for from me here.”

“We’ve travelled halfway across the country already. This is so far from anything else that I’ve ever done that I don’t have even the tiniest inkling what comes after that.”

“I guess I don’t either. This isn’t exactly common for either of us here. I don’t know. Maybe…find a place where I can resume something that looks like the way my life was before?”

“You can’t have your life from before. It’s gone. Just like mine. It’s not coming back.”

“Liddie, is that what this is about? Are you having regrets that you did this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. No. No, not regrets. I’m just scared.”

“I’m scared, too, if that means anything.”

Liddie nodded. She was silent for a long time, then she abruptly stood up. “Guess maybe it’s time to get some sleep. The earlier we wake up, the earlier we can start off for Laramie.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” he said. “I’ll put out the fire.”

She just nodded and went back to the van. Edward couldn’t help but think he had missed something vital in that conversation, but he didn’t know what.

Chapter Thirty

A dim part of his mind, one that was fading quickly, could still recognize the smell coming in from the open window. Brats, burning on a grill. But those words no longer had much meaning to him, and the smell was nothing more than a distraction. Other scents on the air concerned him more. Through the window he clearly caught something new, something completely unfamiliar yet so enticing at the same time, a shifting and swirling odor of honey. It was everywhere. He should have been able to detect it before, but “before” no longer had any meaning. No before and no later, just now.

The window wasn’t the only place where the scent came from. He looked around and saw something else in the room with him, something familiar in shape and thick with the sweet scent. His mind had no name for it anymore. It was just a form that moved and acted like he did. He felt an attachment to it, an urge not to leave it. He didn’t know why, nor did he care. He just knew that was the way things were.

He milled around the room, occasionally bumping into things that he no longer had names for, and the other form did the same. The sweetness from outside urged them both to join it, but they couldn’t figure out how so they just continued shambling here and there.

He soon became aware of one more odor, but this was oh so much different. This one was foreign and meaty, and it filled him with an urge to rip and shred. The other form had to notice it as well, but neither of them could find it. The smell seemed to come from behind a door, but neither of them knew how to use a door handle. So they continued that way for a long time, shambling and walking into the door and then shambling some more.

The light outside had changed by the time the door finally opened. He stood on the far side of the room from it, not even looking, but as soon as the door opened just a crack the smell grew stronger. He turned to it, and a small thing darted out and toward another door. He wasn’t fast enough to catch it, and the other form missed it as well. It went through the door, shutting the door behind it, and he could hear it babbling, saying things he couldn’t understand. Eventually the noise stopped, and there was no more scent. He shambled about some more, not concerned with the fact that he hadn’t done anything other than that all day.

Time passed. He didn’t understand that, nor was he capable of wanting to. Sometimes that small thing would come back, and he would try to catch it again, but it was always too fast. It felt familiar somehow, much in the same way the other form shambling around the room did, but this thing didn’t have the honey scent and therefore it was not something he couldn’t try eating. He was aware sometimes of hunger, and when it got truly bad he couldn’t move quite as much. Many times it got so bad he fell to the floor, unable to pull himself back up. The first time this happened, he was there for a very long time before the meat appeared in front of him. The meat was putrid and rotting, and he didn’t know how it had come to be right where he needed it, but it was enough to restore some of this strength.

The food continued coming, but only when he was at his weakest. Eventually he saw the small scampering thing place it there in front of him, then scamper away to some hiding place. He didn’t know why it did this, nor did he care. He just accepted it.

The small scampering thing didn’t stay small. He was unaware of years passing, but the thing was always there, always growing. Sometimes it would stay in the room long enough to talk to him, speaking words that meant nothing, leaving only when he tried to kill it. It began to look more and more like the other form in the room, despite its ragged clothing and skinny body. Or maybe it was because of the ragged clothing and skinny body, since the form had wasted away to little more. Somewhere in his head there was a part of him that still felt more for this thing than just the lust to rip it apart and eat its flesh, but even on the rare occasions where that part of him surfaced it didn’t stay long.

He wasn’t aware enough to realize the moment when everything was different. The time came when he was too weak to move, and the thing came in and left meat for him and the other, but it didn’t leave. As he ate and regained his strength, he heard that the sounds it made this time were so much different than normal. Crying, the old him would have known it as, but now he couldn’t recognize it. It left the door it normally used open wide and sat down on the floor between him and the other, and it had something in each hand. He didn’t know what to call them anymore, but Edward’s mind, now coming up from its dreaming memory, recognized them both. His daughter, now a young woman after having stayed with them for so long, had a bottle of whiskey in one hand in one hand and a razor blade in the other.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said, or at least that was what he thought she said through the tears. “I’ve tried. I really did. All these years I thought you might come back. Shows just how fucking stupid I am.”

She took one last swig from the whiskey bottle, waited for her long-dead parents to come for her, and then, right as their stiff fingers were about to touch her flesh, she put the razor to her carotid artery and pulled it across her skin.

For the first time since the dreams had started, Edward woke screaming. But the memory didn’t fade away with sleep. The memory continued coming back to him even in full wakefulness. He felt Dana’s blood splash his skin and watched her pleading eyes as the light faded from them. She had to be in her late teens by this time, for she had developed an ample bosom just like her mother’s, and that chest stopped rising and falling as she collapsed to the ground. She’d been with them that whole time, never leaving their side, always hoping in her childish way that her parents would come back to her. She’d never left, never tried to rejoin other people. Maybe it had driven her mad. Maybe she had gone nearly feral, no longer even capable of living around anyone that wasn’t part of the walking dead. Or maybe she had just loved them too much to let them finally leave without making sure they had one more meal to keep their strength up.

“No no no no oh God no!” he screamed inside the van. Liddie was next to him, shaking him by the shoulder and telling him to wake up, it was only a dream, but he was already awake and the memory continued.

His fingers went right for the wound at her throat, where they found enough purchase under the skin to rip her throat clear off. Julia didn’t bother trying to pull off pieces but instead dropped to the floor next to their daughter’s body and bit into the face, her teeth popping Dana’s eye before pulling it from the socket and chewing. Dana still had enough life in her to try screaming at that, but all that came from the ruins of her throat was a wet gurgle. They continued eating, gorging themselves until their stomachs distended. And when it was all finally over, they both stood up and walked out the door in the direction of that sickly sweetness that had enticed them for so long. If there had been any part of them that had been aware of what they were doing to their own flesh and blood, it had been unable to surface through their bloodlust.

“No no no no,” Edward continued saying, but it was no longer a scream. He’d been so loud moments earlier that his throat already felt raw, but still he continued to mutter as the tears streamed down his cheek. The memory was so horrible, so overwhelming, that he thought he could still feel Dana’s hot blood covering him. As he came back to himself, however, he realized it was nothing so horrible. Liddie had joined him on his seat, and she clutched him tightly as he rocked and shivered.

“Shh, it’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

“No, no it’s not,” Edward said. “I killed her.”

She stopped rocking with him for a moment, then caught herself and joined him again in the gentle movements. “Who? Who did you kill?”

“Dana. I killed my Dana.” He knew that wasn’t technically true, since Dana had really been the one to take her own life, assuring that there was no way she would come back like her parents had, but it was true enough. And saying that he had killed her didn’t even feel as horrible as the truth. Simply killing his only daughter would have been the better option.

“Edward, it was just a dream.”

“No. No it wasn’t. She’s dead. She’s been dead all this time and I ate…” He couldn’t allow himself to finish. It was too much. Everything everyone had been saying about him all this time was true. He was not human. He was a monster, a disgusting thing that had no right to continue existing on this Earth. “Kill me,” he said. “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, you have to kill me now.”

“Edward, no. I won’t.”

“Kill me! I’m nothing! I’m a thing! I can’t…I don’t want to…”

“No,” she said softly. The word was so calm that it brought him back to himself a little, at least enough that he was able to look her in the eye.

“I don’t deserve to live,” he said.

“I won’t kill you, and I won’t let you hurt yourself either,” she said. “Not now, not ever.”

“But I’m a monster.”

“I never believed that, and I never will. That wasn’t you. You had no control over it. But you have control now, and I believe you’re strong enough to face it. You can go on. And I can help you, if you want me to.”

He saw that soft look in her eyes again, the same one he’d seen by the fire. She meant every word of it. She really believed. He didn’t think he’d be able to believe any of that without her.

There was no flutter in his chest this time, no anxious moment of anticipation. He moved his head toward hers, and the angle of his body against hers made the whole act clumsy, but their lips still met. Liddie was too shocked to do anything at first, but as soon as she recovered she pushed back, returning his kiss and gripping him tight to her. With her hands holding him he no longer shivered, and he moved around trying to get into a less awkward position without breaking contact. His hands brushed against her breasts, and although his first instinct was to recoil from the touch and apologize profusely he instead let them hover there, lightly touching them and enjoying the way they rose and fell against his palm. Then his hand went lower, sliding over the swell of her chest and down her stomach. Her own hands began to move lower, but they stopped just above his waist. She pulled away slightly, breaking the kiss, and spoke quietly through gasping breaths.

“Edward, are you sure you’re ready?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t want you doing this if you’re going to regret it later.”

“Later I might regret not doing it.” She nodded. He wondered idly if this was love for her. It might be. He knew it wasn’t for him, not yet, but he thought it quite easy for the day to come when it was. She wasn’t Julia, and she never would be. But she was someone just as wonderful, just as beautiful, just as strong. He didn’t deserve her. A monster like him deserved nothing. And yet somehow she disagreed. She saw the man he had once been and could be again. He pressed his hand harder against her stomach and continued down as they kissed again, and she reached for the zipper of his coveralls.

The moment was awkward as they both removed each other’s clothes. The van had seemed spacious enough earlier, but now the roof seemed lower as they bumped it taking off their shirts, and the seat felt too small to accommodate both their bodies lying down, even one on top of the other. Yet at the same time the location seemed strangely right. They’d met in one of these vans, and now they were moving to the next level in one. But that was nothing compared to how correct it felt to Edward to touch her smooth bare skin. She was warm, full of life, so much different than anything he had felt for nearly fifty years. Touching her brought home the reality she had been trying to instill in him moments earlier. She was right in that he was different. He wasn’t a lifeless monster. He had blood pumping through his veins just like her.

As they made love the time seemed to have no meaning, just like when he’d walked the planet without any real life in his body, but unlike then he could still attach meaning to the moment. It was not a perfect moment, but he knew it was what they both needed. It was what they both had to have in order to feel truly alive.

They finished with her on top, and with a deep, satisfied breath she gently let herself down to lie over him on the seat. He held her back firmly, enjoying every time her chest pressed against his from her breath. She chuckled softly for no apparent reason.

“Something funny?” he asked.

“No, not something you’d find funny at least.”

“How do you know without trying it on me?”

“Heh. Well, the thought just occurred to me that you’re pretty okay at that for someone who hasn’t practiced in fifty years.”

He chuckled too. “Better yet, think of it this way. You just made love to someone old enough to be your grandfather.”

“Ew, we’re not even going to talk about that. For all intents and purposes in my mind you’re only a few years older. Which is funny, since I’m the one who’s completely exhausted. You look like you could go again.”

He said nothing to that, instead caressing her back and enjoying the way it felt under his hand. She felt a little cold, though. Next time they would need to find themselves a blanket or something.

“Edward?” she asked. “Are you going to be okay? I mean, both about us and about, you know, what you remembered?”

“We’ll deal with any problems as they come up. Right now, are you okay?”

“I… I just feel cold, is all.”

“We should get you dressed again. We can snuggle again after that.”

“No, not yet. Don’t let… let… don’t let go…”

She started shivering against him.

“Liddie? Is something wrong?”

“Edward? Don’t let… Edward?”

“Jesus, Liddie. You’re practically shaking. Are you sure…” He looked into her eyes, knowing instantly that look. She was scared. Terrified, in fact. Somewhere among all the memories that he had recovered since waking up, something about this moment seemed familiar, but his brain wouldn’t let him face it yet.

Her chest heaved several times against him in quick succession, and then stopped.

“Liddie? Liddie, what’s going…” That mental block in his head finally moved, and he realized exactly what was happening. “No, oh God no. Liddie! Wake up! Don’t do this!”

There was nothing really for her to wake up from. Her eyes were still open, staring directly down into his, but they were unfocused, without any inner light. She moved, squirming slightly on top of him, but there was no rhythm or purpose to any of it. Her chest didn’t move, and there was no rhythmic thumping of her heart from behind her breast. But worst of all was the way she smelled, starting off small and barely noticeable but growing quickly.

Edward continued to hold her tight, calling her name softly as the van filled with the scent of honey.

Chapter Thirty One

Edward spent the rest of the longest night of his life outside under the stars. He hadn’t been able to stay in the van. The pheromones had been so strong that he couldn’t block them out, and they mixed with the scent of lovemaking. He couldn’t stand that right now. He didn’t even bother to put his clothes back on. He simply closed the door of the van behind him, leaving her trapped until he could figure out what had to happen next.

For several hours he tried not to think of anything at all, but eventually he didn’t feel he had any choice but to go back to that horrible moment and try figuring out what had happened.

Edward went to stand next to the van and put a hand against the window. There was still some fog inside the windows from their lovemaking, but enough of it had cleared away that he could see her shape inside the dark van. Every moment he stood there he hoped something would prove that he had been mistaken, that she really wasn’t infected. Infected. That was the only word he could use to describe her right now. He didn’t dare use the Z or the R words.

She barely acknowledged him. She sat on the seat, the very same seat where they had just been loving and caressing each other, but she couldn’t quite get the posture down, like her legs didn’t want to bend and let her rest. She kept trying to rise, bumping her head on the ceiling and forcing her to plop back down. He knocked softly on the window once, hoping to get some sort of reaction to make himself believe she was still in there. She turned her head at the noise, but nothing else.

This was his fault. There was no way to deny that, but he hadn’t quite figured out how yet. Had he maybe bitten her in the heat of the moment? Possibly, although he didn’t remember that. It hadn’t even occurred to him, nor probably her, that something as simple as a love bite could be dangerous from him. He’d heard from numerous doctors that he still carried the Animator Virus, but he’d all but forgotten that his bite would then have the same effect as that of any other zombie.

He thought back to the moments before and during sex, and he shook his head. No, that couldn’t be it. He went over every moment, every movement of both their bodies, but there hadn’t been a bite. He was sure of it. Perhaps…could it have been the kissing? Out of all those times that they had almost kissed only to have him decide against it at the last moment, had he been unknowingly saving her life from him? He thought back to what he remembered about becoming a zombie, about how long it had taken for Julia to turn after she’d been bitten or after she had bitten him. He supposed that with a simple kiss the virus might have taken longer to enter her system, but that didn’t seem correct either. He thought about the AIDS virus and how it supposedly could not be passed through kissing. That must have meant something about the mouth prevented it from spreading or something like that, right? So what else could it have been…

He gasped and slid down to a sitting position against the side of the van as the answer finally came to him. Given the amount of time it had taken for the virus to take hold of her, he could work backward and figure out right about the moment she had been infected. What had she been exposed to just a minute or two beforehand that she hadn’t been exposed to before? His semen. The virus had passed to her when he had come inside her.

He was the first person in human history to pass on the Animator Virus as an STD.

He had a fresh bout of crying for several minutes before he wiped away the tears, stood up, and looked back inside the van. There was no noticeable change. She still didn’t even look dead. Except for the vacant look in her eyes and the loose way she held her limbs, she could have passed for being alive. She wouldn’t look like that in a few days, or maybe even a few hours. Her skin would sag and take on a sick hue. Soon her flesh would begin to rot, her eyes might gloss over with cataracts, her blood would darken to near-black. Anyone who saw her would forget that she had once been anything other than infected. They would forget because none of them understood the way he did: this wasn’t the end.

The revelation came to him and made his breath catch in his throat. Or course it wasn’t the end. He had told her as much when they’d buried Timothy North in the Nevada desert. Her mind was gone and everything that made her who she was had retreated to the deepest depths of her brain, but she could continue on like this for a very long time. She could be hurt or damaged in so many ways, yet as long as there was no damage to her head she could survive anything else. And she could come back. Somewhere in her Liddie still existed, a whole person hidden and waiting to return exactly like Edward had. Edward remembered the brief moments in his memories where he had nearly felt his old awareness return, just long enough to feel some sort of kinship with the woman he had loved. Did Liddie feel that same thing now? When he was next to her, did she still feel a connection she was incapable of understanding? Edward bet she did. And he could bring all of that back.

All he had to do was figure out how to make a Z7.

It sounded like an impossible task, but he himself had already proven that it could be done. The answer was in Winnebago, Illinois, or at least he hoped so. That had to be the only thing the old man could have meant when he said he had created Edward. He thought back to everything Liddie’s mother had told him about the different variations of zombies. The CRS may have never gotten down to what exactly had caused him to become a Z7, but the Z5s and Z6s had to be created by tinkering with their genetics. It was entirely possible that this old man, whoever he was, had done something to his DNA and forced the change. So if this person could do it to him, why not Liddie as well?

The idea excited him, but his smile disappeared quickly when he realized how hard the rest of the trip would be. The van was broken down, so if he didn’t go on foot the rest of the way to Illinois then he would need to find another ride. But he didn’t have the slightest clue how to get one in this strange future world. He didn’t know any of the customs, he didn’t know exactly how to use Liddie’s pay cards (which may have looked similar to credit cards but seemed to have a more complex money system attached to them), and he didn’t even know exactly where he had to go from here without the van’s map. Liddie had been his guide through all this, but she couldn’t help now.

It wasn’t like he could go into any towns or settlements anyway anymore, not with an infected woman tagging along trying to eat the townsfolk.

All of these questions worried him, but he refused to let them get him down just now. He had a reasonable hope that he could make things right, and that had to be enough.

He opened up the door and went back inside. Liddie’s scent was still strong, but now it no longer seemed so horrible. He sat down on the seat next to her, still hoping she would show some little sign that she recognized him. She didn’t even look at him, but she stopped trying to stand up and instead sat quietly by his side. He supposed that would have to be enough for now.

Chapter Thirty Two

The sunrise brought with it a whole host of problems, most of which he had considered last night but for which he still hadn’t found answers. Strangely, though, the biggest problem for now was simply getting dressed.

Edward himself had no problem getting dressed. It was Liddie who caused the biggest issue. When Edward had left the van earlier to take a leak, he’d smelled several other zombies nearby. When he came back in some of the pheromones must have wafted in behind him, because Liddie kept moaning and trying to claw her way out the door. He would have worried about her opening it by accident and getting away before he could stop her, but she wasn’t even groping at the handle. She groped for the glass, as though she couldn’t understand why her fingers couldn’t go through to the other side. Her restlessness made it nearly impossible to get her clothes back on. Part of the problem was also that he didn’t feel comfortable touching her naked body now. It felt wrong, like a violation of her personal space, to touch her without her permission. It didn’t matter to him that he’d had plenty of permission last night. That was completely different, and now even so much as accidently brushing her hip as he tried to pull her pants back on felt like a perverted thing to do. He kept apologizing to her every time a finger grazed her skin. Once or twice she moaned at that, and Edward liked to pretend that was her way of saying he was forgiven, but he knew that wasn’t true. He supposed he could try using his limited control of the pheromones to keep her from twitching around so much, but that would have felt like just as much of a violation as touching her.

All that time struggling to get her decent again, however, gave him plenty of time to think. He thought he had a plan, or at least the partial beginning of one. So far the van had done a pretty decent job of keeping her from wandering off, and he didn’t have any reason to think it couldn’t continue on like that. If he could keep her here in the van, then he could go alone into Laramie, try to find some vehicle for cheap that would at least take them some distance, and maybe even find a map. Then he could come back and get her, and they would be back on their way to Winnebago.

He didn’t feel comfortable just leaving the van so close to the side of the road where someone could see it, though, so he took an hour trying to get it off the road. He hadn’t seen anyone else out here since the van had broken down yesterday evening, but he didn’t want to take any chance of someone finding it. If someone did happen along, the best case scenario would be them going on along with their business and then reporting wherever they ended up that they seen a strange sight back along the highway that might need investigating. Worst case scenario involved rednecks with itchy trigger fingers looking for a zombie to use as target practice.

In the end, he couldn’t do a lot to hide it. Even when switching it into neutral, which was complicated even further by him having to figure out how to put the unfamiliar controls in neutral to begin with, he had a hard time pushing it. There was a ditch along the side of the road that the van wouldn’t be able to go over, and no real cover for miles around to hide it behind anyway. In the end he found a particularly steep section of the ditch and, with Liddie safely outside while he did it, pushed the van in. The van was too big to be completely hidden, but once he threw some dirt and dust over it the van at least looked like it had been there for while. Hopefully that would discourage anyone who came by and just glanced at it.

Liddie had already started wandering off down the road by the time he was finished, and it took him some effort to round her back to the van. Again he realized the task would have been easier if he just gave her an extra nudge with the pheromones, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It felt a little silly, but he couldn’t help but think that sort of thing was akin to mind control, and he refused to force Liddie to do anything with that sort of power. He opened up the van door, preparing to have to give her a little push in, but was surprised when she got in all by herself and sat down on the now-at-an-angle seat. He shrugged and was about to close the door, but she gave a long moan. He stopped and stared, but she simply looked ahead like he wasn’t even there. Edward tried to close the door again, and once more she moaned. The noise almost sounded sad.

He paused. There was still no indication that she knew or cared he was there, but he had to wonder.

“Liddie?” he asked. “Are you there?”

No answer.

“Listen. I’ve got a plan. I think I can help you, or at least I think I’ve figured out someone who can. But I’ve got to go do some stuff before that can happen. Just stay here, okay? I promise to God that I will come back for you.”

No answer.

He debated for a second whether or not to say anything more before deciding on just giving her a peck on the check. Her skin had lost all its heat and was even starting to feel a little rough to the touch. That wasn’t really the way he wanted to remember her, and he wasn’t sure if he could do that again any time soon. When he closed the door this time, however, she remained silent. He hoped that meant she got the message.

The sun was the only way he had to keep track of time as he walked to Laramie. He left when it was only slightly over the horizon and finally got his first glimpse of the city when the sun was directly overhead. From this distance it looked just like any other town he’d seen, with a ring of broken down structures surrounding what looked like a wall, although it was much higher than any of the ones he’d seen in mid-country, and what could have been a thriving community inside.

He spent the rest of the way trying to figure out what he would say. His coveralls might make for some interesting questions, but he thought he could work that into a convincing lie. It would probably even work better if he mixed in just a slight amount of the truth. But once he got inside, he had no clue what he was going to do. If he could he would need to get some food, since he was starving and starting to feel quite sluggish, but he didn’t want to spend any more money than he had to.

He was so busy imagining what it would taste like right now to bite into a savory plate of raw steak or ground beef that he didn’t hear the commotion from one of the guard towers as he got closer. The towers were tall, even taller than anything Stanford had stationed around their perimeter, and had he been paying attention he would have already been able to see several people staring down at him as he passed the first ruined buildings just outside the city. He did finally notice them, however, when they shot at him.

“Holy shit!” he screamed, jumping back as a bullet ricocheted off the broken pavement in front of him.

“Wait, stop!” someone said from up in one of the towers. “It’s a human!”

Edward waited for another shot. When it didn’t come, he tentatively began walking again. There was something different about the setup here, but he couldn’t place his finger on it until he got closer to the walls. Unlike with most of the other towns and cities he had seen, there was no cleared-away ring immediately surrounding the wall. The wall, too, looked different. Others looked like they had been planned and built up with fresh material. This one seemed to be made out of random bricks, cinder blocks, and large stones thrown together with a cheap concrete badly poured over them. He tried to remember if Liddie had told him anything about Laramie, but he didn’t think even she knew much about it other than it was a sizable place on their map. From what he could see, it didn’t look like the kind of place that had done a lot to distinguish itself.

“Hey, you!” someone said from the nearest tower. “If you’re really a human then say something!”

Edward had been rehearsing this moment in his head. “Please, you’ve got to help me. I need to get back to Denver.”

“And just who the fuck are you?”

“I’m a maintenance worker with the CRS,” he said. He had figured that was an easy enough way to explain why he wore coveralls instead of normal clothes. Liddie had mentioned at one point during the long miles between Reno and Salt Lake that there was CRS facility in Denver, but they mostly studied the effects of the high altitude on the zombies and weren’t considered a major part of the organization.

“CRS?” the tower guard asked. “What the fuck is that?”

Edward blinked. That wasn’t good. As far as he had seen so far, almost everybody knew who the CRS was. If he was in a place where they weren’t known at all, then he truly was far from civilization. Suddenly he wasn’t sure that he wanted to go in here at all, but he had no other option at the moment that he could see.

Someone else in the tower spoke up. “They’re those scientists shitheads that were poking around out here last year, remember? Hey, you out there. What’s your name?”

“Edward.”

“Well, Eddy, what’re you guys doing back up here, and why the flying fuck would any brainiac like yourself actually be out here alone?”

“I…I was part of a team. We were doing some routine repairs on some field equipment when a group of reanimated came out of nowhere. I’m the…um, the only one who got away. Please, I haven’t eaten in almost a day, and I need water. And I have to find a way to get back to Denver.”

He heard the two voices talking to each other in low tones. One of them sounded like he was trying to hide laughter. Finally the first one spoke again. “Well all right then, Eddy. I’m sure we can find some food for you, but I don’t know about anything else.”

Unlike other towns, this one had a huge double set of doors instead of just a gate. They looked cobbled together from pieces of scrap metal, and both of them were rusted so badly they hurt Edward’s ears as some armed men pushed them open from the other side. Edward thanked them as he went in, but they both just scowled in response.

Just on the other side of the doors a steep set of stairs led up to the towers, and one of the men came down at a cautious pace. The stairs looked about ready to break apart under his weight. He was tall and skinny, with long knotty hair and clothes that were full of tears and moth holes. Edward’s dusty coveralls looked like a tuxedo next to him.

“Well then, I guess we should welcome you to Laramie,” the man said. Edward looked over the town around him and tried not to gape at the site. When he had first woken up, the ruins outside Fond du Lac had definitely given him the illusion of a post-apocalyptic world. The town itself had cracked that illusion, and Stanford had completely shattered it. Laramie, however, put that illusion back together good as new. Many of the buildings closest to the wall were still somewhat recognizable for the quaint little family homes they had once been, but they all looked like they’d been built before the Uprising and had barely been maintained since. Further away and closer to the center of town there appeared to be newer buildings rising up over the others, but just because they were newer didn’t mean they looked safer to be in. One building, rising up at least six stories, looked to be built with the same mismatched style as the outer wall and appeared to be lopsided. The streets were bustling with people and makeshift tents and booths had been set up on what had once been lawns but were now little more than muddy pits. The rare pieces of clothing that looked newer than fifteen years old appeared to be homemade.

Yes, this was most definitely not Stanford anymore.

The man from the tower smacked Edward on the shoulder. “Hey, don’t you go doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“I’ve seen that look before when some asswipe wanders up here from Denver or somewhere. That’s the look of you thinking the place you come from is so much better. Well it’s not, so fuck off.”

“I didn’t say anything like that,” Edward said.

“You didn’t need to. Just remember, you better mind your fucking manners around here. We don’t like fucking rude people, got it?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Good for you. Now look here. I got to go run and have someone report to my super that you came wandering in here, but for now you can go get yourself something to eat and the boss will be by to talk to you in a while, got it? Just head on down Arena Street here until you actually get to the arena. Right across the street you’ll see a building with a sign that says it belongs to Stupid Jerry. You go in there and tell them Bert sent you in and you need the Dumbass Wanderer special. You got all that?”

Edward nodded that he did, not because he actually understood any of it but simply because the guy was starting to give him the creeps. He supposed that would have been rather funny, a zombie being creeped out by someone, if he didn’t think that mentioning the joke out loud would get him killed.

He followed the directions Bert had given him. Stupid Jerry’s turned out to be what passed for a diner in this town, and the Dumbass Wanderer special was something the establishment had worked out with the Laramie security forces. They would feed the occasional human that ended up this far out (almost never on purpose) and the security people would foot the bill. That didn’t mean the waitress at Stupid Jerry’s was happy to serve him, nor did it mean the food they served him much resembled food. The special consisted of some soft substance (possibly mashed potatoes) mixed with meat (rabbit was Edward’s best guess) and some kind of sauce (which was pretty much unidentifiable) all served on a ceramic plate which, through some miracle of previously unknown chemistry, was somehow rusty.

Edward did his best to force it all down as though he were exactly as starved as he had claimed. The potatoes threatened to come up, but the meat worked just fine for him. The sauce, which tasted like little more than maple syrup heavily seasoned with pepper, made him think that pretty soon he might recreate his early CRS pants accidents.

He was just finishing it up when Bert came through the door with a short but very muscular man in a duster and a cowboy hat. Edward had to look again to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, but the man was real enough. The hat looked practically new, but the duster was ripped in many places and pretty well shredded where its too-long length dragged on the floor.

“Hello there!” the man said as he walked up to Edward’s rickety table. He had an enormous smile on his face and stuck out his hand for Edward to shake before he’d even come fully through the door. “Bert here told me your name is Edward. That correct? And he also told me you’re here from the C-R-S.” He said the three letters slowly, as though he were pronouncing them for the first time in his life.

“Um, yes, but I wasn’t really supposed to end up here.”

“Yes, yes, Bert told me all about that also. Tell you what, I’m going to join you and sit down. Do you mind if I sit down Edward?”

Edward was starting to think that he did mind, that there was something not quite right about the way this guy was going on, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea to say no.

The man took a seat. “I suppose I should tell you my name, especially since I hope we become really good friends, Edward. Name’s Billy Horton. I run security for a good chunk of Laramie.”

Edward nodded. “I’m sorry, did you say friends?”

“I did indeed, Edward, I did indeed. Would you like that?”

“Um…”

“Now, now, don’t go answering that just yet. Don’t go jumping the gun. I think I should like to talk to you a little bit first. Can we talk?”

The problem, as Edward saw it, was not whether or not he could talk but whether or not Horton could ever stop. Edward didn’t know quite what he was going to do yet, but he did know he needed to do it quick. He highly doubted Liddie could overheat in the van, and he was pretty confident she couldn’t escape, but the idea of her out there alone was making him nervous.

“Sure,” Edward said.

“That’s good. Real good. I’ll cut to the chase, because we don’t like wasting time around here, you know what I mean? Bert said something about you wanting a way back to Denver. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a truck that maybe I can give you completely free of charge and you can get right on back there right away. You like the sound of that?”

Edward forced himself to keep his mouth from dropping open. That sounded perfect. Too perfect. “Yes, that would be so great. But…”

“But what, Edward?”

“It just seems to me that Laramie might be the kind of place that needs any vehicle it can get.”

“Well, every place is like that, isn’t it? But we’ll be willing to give one up maybe, that is if you can give us something in return.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have much. I’ve got some pay cards.”

“We don’t want your plastic pay things, Edward. No one real uses those things. But you do have access to something we need. You see, I’m not just part of the security forces around here. I’m also a business owner. I’m a thriving business owner. Too thriving. What I sell, people buy, but I don’t have as much to sell as I used to. And that’s where you come in, my very good friend. I think I could use someone who works for a place like the C-R-S as a, why don’t we call it a business partner?”

This wasn’t good, but Edward thought it couldn’t hurt too much to play along at the moment. He needed to get that truck, and the sooner the better.

“I’m listening. What kind of business?”

“I’m in the entertainment business, Edward. Did you see that place across the street when you came in?”

“Um, yeah. Bert called it the Arena.” He’d seen it, but he hadn’t been sure what it was supposed to be. From the outside it just looked like a big round building, about two stories high and taking up a whole city block.

“That’s what it is, all right. And in that Arena we keep people happy. They’ll pay the big bucks to go in and watch even when they don’t have the big bucks.”

“Some kind of sports thing?” Edward asked.

“Oh hell yeah, biggest and best sport in the world, Edward. Killing fucking zeds.”

Edward tried not to let any of his horror show on his face. “You know, I think I’ve heard of other places that do that.”

“But no other place is anywhere good as mine. You should see some of the setups I have. I have this giant saw I made, yes? And it spins around and around and drops down onto the zed. Great stuff, you’d think, yeah? Except the way I have it set up, it doesn’t cut all the way through the zed. It slices them all the way from groin to the base of their neck. Never touches the head, so they’re pretty much split in half but they’re still moving! It’s a classic!”

Edward felt the Dumbass Wanderer special trying to come up again, although this time he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop it. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand. What does this have to do with me?” He half expected Billy Horton to scream that he wanted Edward to be the next attraction in his show and jump at him from across the table. Edward was suddenly painfully aware of the grainy photo that most of America had seen. His only hope was that these people didn’t even have television, or at least were too busy watching their formerly living citizens get ripped apart to bother watching the news.

“Well, I’ll tell you something, Edward. There used to be a time when the fucking zeds were ankle deep around here. As I’m sure you saw on your long hike here, that’s not so much anymore. And if I want to continue offering fine quality entertainment, I need more zeds. And that’s something I hear maybe this C-R-S might just have.”

“I’m not so sure they would be so easy for me to get.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be putting your job on the line and all. I can get why you might be hesitant. But I pay top dollar. Usually I use real money, but I just know I could get some of that plastic monies you have.”

Edward wanted to reach across the table and punch this guy in the face, but this sounded like the kind of deal he could fake easily. He just needed to play along a bit longer. “And all I would need to do is bring you… zeds? Sounds like it would definitely be worth a risk or two, if you really have the kind of money you say you do.”

“Oh, I sure do, Edward, I sure do. I have to, in order to keep all those guys I got out there patrolling the wastelands.”

“They… patrol?”

“All over. As far out as I can send them. What do you say, Edward? I give you a vehicle and maybe you get me a pipeline of zeds?”

“Sure,” he said. “Absolutely.” Anything to get that truck. Anything to get the hell out of this hellhole before it was too late.

Chapter Thirty Three

Edward had feared for a minute as Billy Horton gave him the keys to a rusty old Ford pickup that it would be like the van, complete with controls and features he didn’t know how to operate. But it was a good old model, probably ugly-looking under the hood from all the jury-rigged parts, but it ran and that was all that mattered. He must have been slipping. He was starting to actually like the sight of Fords.

He gave Horton all the right assurances that he would be in contact soon and took the keys from the man, all the time trying not to act like he was in a hurry. He didn’t know how many men Horton had out there or even if they searched for their zombies anywhere near the van, but he felt now like he was running against a clock.

He sped down the highway as fast as the truck would take him, which unfortunately wasn’t that fast anymore. He ignored the way the truck shimmied horribly with every bump and pothole in the road and how it felt like it might shake apart if it went anything over forty-five. After what felt like too long he saw the van in the ditch, although instead of making him sigh with relief it made him wince. The dust and dirt hadn’t done much at all to keep it from being visible from the road. If anyone else had been along here recently, they had definitely seen it.

He pulled the truck right up next to the ditch and hopped out, leaving the engine running. The van looked exactly as he had left it, but he wasn’t reassured until he scrambled down into the ditch, opened the back door, and saw Liddie sitting there. The smell inside the van was horrible now, and not because of the pheromones. The zombie bowel issue had apparently finally hit her.

“It’s okay, Liddie,” he said. “When you wake back up I will completely deny that this ever happened. Now come on, we need to get out of here right now.” He held his hands out for her to grab so he could help her out, but she just stared at them. Although he didn’t like doing it, he tried giving her a little nudge with the pheromones. All respect for her aside, they didn’t have time to do this the right way. They could have minutes or they could have hours before any of Horton’s men found them, but he had no way of knowing for sure and didn’t plan on risking it.

He must have fumbled a little with his control of the pheromones, because she froze and looked around frantically. He tried again, and this time she came to him. He helped her out, taking just enough time to give her a strong, heartfelt hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Time to get the hell out of Dodge,” Edward said, then held her hand to lead her out of the ditch. He looked up, trying to find a hand hold that she could use too with the right cajoling from him, and instead saw the barrel of a rifle pointed right at him.

The man holding the gun stood in the back of the truck, and the shocked look on his face would have been priceless if not for the threatening way he held the weapon. “Don’t move, freak,” the man said. “Don’t you dare fucking move.”

He kept the rifle pointed at Edward with one hand as he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket with the other. He pressed a button and held it to his ear. “Billy, your guess paid off, but you are never in a million years going to believe the sick shit I just saw…No, he’s got a zed with him, had it hidden out in some abandoned van, but you need…Yeah, I can do that. But hurry up, though. I don’t want to hang around this perverted bastard any longer than I have to.”

He put the phone back in his pocket. “You’re going to be in some deep shit now, you twisted fuck,” he said.

Edward stared at the guy and tried to wrap his head around the situation. It was obvious by now that the man had been in the back of the truck the whole time. Edward had been in too much of a hurry to look back there. But that didn’t make a lot of sense to him.

“What exactly is going on here?” Edward asked. “What are you doing in the back of my truck?”

“Not your truck, fuckstick. This is Billy Horton’s truck.”

“Which he gave to me.”

“Oh, wake the fuck up. He only let you have the truck because he realized there was something seriously fucking wrong with your story. I was up there in the tower with Bert when you came in. What, you think we’re all just dumb fucking hicks that can’t tell which way Denver is? You didn’t come from the south, you came in from the west.”

Edward debated whether or not he should deny it and try to continue on with his cover story. They obviously knew he wasn’t what he said he was, but maybe he could sow enough doubt in this man’s mind that he would let his guard down. After all, he really didn’t want to be still standing here when Horton showed back up.

“That’s because that’s where our research equipment was set up,” Edward said. “I swear to God, I wasn’t lying about any of it. I just want to get this nightmare over with and go home.”

“Really? And what the fuck was that I saw when you let that thing out of the van, huh?”

Edward would have cussed if he didn’t still think there might be a way to get out of this. This man had seen the kiss. Edward looked over at Liddie and tried to decide if she could still pass at all for being alive. She might, he realized, if the man didn’t get too close of a look at her. She was still fresh enough, although if the man got a real close look he might see all the telltale signs that she was a zombie. Of course, no one in their right mind would get that close to zombies. They would go in for the attack if they so much as got a glimpse of a living person.

Which, Edward suddenly realized, was exactly what she had right now. She was looking directly up at the man in the back of the truck, yet she made no move to go after him. Either Edward was holding her back with the pheromones without even realizing it, or there was still enough of her in there to think about the situation and act accordingly. He prayed to God it was the second. Either way, that gave him an idea.

“What the hell do you mean, ‘that thing?’“ he said. “This is Dr. Gates.”

“Bullshit. Do you think I was born yesterday? I know a fucking zed when I see one.”

“How the hell could she be a reanimated?” Edward asked. “If she was, she would be trying to kill both of us by now.”

The man looked confused at that, and he lowered the rifle a little. It was still pointed at Edward, but that was a step in the right direction.

“Yeah, I guess that’s weird,” the man said. “But just look at her. She’s not moving and she’s not talking.”

“She’s in shock, okay?” Edward said. “The entire rest of our team was killed. She hasn’t said a thing since then.”

The rifle lowered just a little more. That was good, but this was taking too long. If Horton was coming out here in a vehicle like this truck, he wouldn’t arrive that quickly. But if he had something better—and Edward had to assume that this truck here was the worst thing Horton had, just in case Edward really had been about to take it somewhere else—then going at a flat-out speed even over the rough road still wouldn’t take very long. For all Edward knew, Horton had already been on his way when the man called in. He had to hurry this up.

“Why didn’t you bring her with you into Laramie?” the man asked.

Edward decided a little bit of pretend outrage was in order. “Are you fucking deaf? I just said she was in shock. It was hard enough getting her this far. I saw this abandoned van and thought she would be safe here as I went into town.” He toned his voice down, going this time for pleading. “Please, just let us go. I’m telling you the truth. Why the hell would I lie?”

The man hesitated a moment longer, then lowered the rifle completely. Edward found it ironic that such a question was what finally convinced him. It never occurred to the guy that a lie could be more believable than the truth.

“Shit,” the man said. “I’m really sorry. It’s just Horton had this feeling about you, and his hunches are usually right. He thought you might be hiding something out here.” He climbed over the truck’s tailgate, leaned the rifle against the nearest tire, and bent down to offer Edward a hand up out of the ditch.

“Apology accepted,” Edward said. He grabbed the man’s hand and yanked. The man lost his balance and tumbled into the ditch. Before he could move from his landing spot Edward kicked him square in the ribs. Whether it was because Edward lost his focus for a second or the sudden action spooked her, Liddie came out of her calm moment and went straight for the prone man on the ground.

“Liddie, no!” Edward screamed. He used that same burst of random pheromones that had stopped the teenage zombie back at the CRS, and it was just as effective in stopping Liddie. But that didn’t feel like enough to Edward. It wasn’t enough to just confuse her. He felt like he had to appeal to that part of her he still knew was inside, to bring it closer to the surface. The man moaned on the ground, apparently not aware yet that a zombie stood right over him and wanted desperately to rip him apart. Edward pulled back slightly on his control of her, talking all the while.

“You don’t want to do this. You have it in you to resist all those urges. I know you can.” He didn’t want to add that he hadn’t been able to do that himself, mostly because he didn’t want to hear it. She could be the one that was different, he just knew it. “Just leave him where he is, and let’s get up to the truck. Can you do that? Can you follow me?”

He felt her own pheromones struggling against him, trying to convince him to join her in eating this thing, this prey. In fact, the honey scent was far stronger than it should have been. After a moment Edward realized what had to be happening. There were other zombies coming this way. He could smell at least two other sources of pheromones, and they themselves had picked up the traces of meat in the air. Between Liddie and the two approaching arrivals, Edward thought maybe it wouldn’t be the best idea to try letting Liddie be herself right now. The urge from the pheromones would be too great, and as much as this man had pissed Edward off, he didn’t want Liddie to get her first taste of human flesh just yet. In fact, if he had his way she never would. When she finally came back, she would be able to do it with a clear conscience.

That left him with a choice, though. He couldn’t take this guy with them, but did he really want to leave him here to possibly get eaten? Did he really deserve that fate? He could leave the rifle behind, far enough away that the man could reach it before the zombies got here but not before Edward and Liddie made a clean getaway. That meant, however, that the zombies would be the ones to get shot, or worse, get taken back to Horton’s hideous arena. They might not have been real people to anyone else, but they were real enough to Edward and they hadn’t asked for the fate this man would give them.

This wasn’t a decision Edward was ready for yet. Human or zombie? Where did his loyalties really lie?

Edward pulled Liddie up the side of the ditch, then quickly ushered her around to the passenger side of the truck. After she was in he ran back to look into the ditch. The man was just starting to get up, and Edward could now see the two zombies coming up over a hill about five hundred feet away. He grabbed the rifle, hefted it in his hands like it could tell him the right answer that way, then made his decision and threw the rifle in the back of the truck (although this time he looked to make sure there was nothing else back there other than the tarp the intruder had hid under). The guy could get away easily enough if he ran, but the zombies wouldn’t have a chance if he had the gun. It was the closest thing he could think of to a win-win.

Edward got in the driver’s side, ignoring the way the guy screamed at him from the ditch, and pulled a tight u-turn so he was headed back east on the highway. This time he ignored the way the truck creaked and groaned with every crack and hole in the road. He didn’t have time to worry about making sure the truck survived. Horton would be on his way, and in all likelihood he would be coming up this very stretch of road. If Edward had known anything about the local terrain he might have tried to find a way around that wouldn’t possibly result in a confrontation, but Edward couldn’t risk getting lost or stranded so close to Laramie. His time here had been brief, but he’d already worn out his welcome.

He could see something coming toward him from over a mile away, but he couldn’t see exactly what yet. Whatever the vehicle, Edward had to assume it was Horton and he wasn’t going to just let Edward go by easily. He briefly hoped for a moment that Horton would think he was the other guy coming to meet him, but Horton seemed to have told him to wait at the van, and Horton didn’t seem like the kind of guy that many people chose to disobey. Also, Edward realized, the guy back at the van had still had his phone on him. He’d probably already told Horton exactly what had happened, complete with lurid tales of Edward kissing a zombie. No, Edward realized, this was about to get very ugly.

He could see now that the other vehicle had started out its life as a truck, but it didn’t look much like one anymore. A cowcatcher had been mounted to the front, and it had been jacked up and given larger wheels. The whole thing still looked rusty and decrepit, but there was no mistaking that this thing had been built to not let anything in the road stop it. It was moving straight down the middle of the highway, and as soon as the two vehicles were close enough to see each other it moved over so it was heading directly at Edward on the right side.

It had to be Horton, but he didn’t look like he had any intention of playing nice. He was going to catch Edward in a game of chicken, yet Horton had no reason to be the first to back down. In a head-on collision, Edward would obviously be the one to lose.

Suddenly Edward was painfully aware that neither he nor Liddie were wearing their seat belts.

Chapter Thirty Four

She heard and saw everything that happened around her, but comprehended very little of it. Only when the form with her, the one that always tried to stay so close to her side, talked or touched her did she feel like she could understand the unfamiliar world around her just a bit better. When he spoke, things came to her, things that she could no longer recognize enough to call memories, and she nearly felt something beyond just physical sensations. The sweet honey scent he gave off, which was so much more overpowering than any other odor, made her feel more grounded and calm. Even now, when this other form was obviously quite agitated, she felt slightly more lucid. Not lucid enough, however, to understand why the truck she was in suddenly tipped at a wild angle.

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.

Chapter Thirty Five

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.”

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

“No issue? Listen wanderer, Ritchie already reported back to me about what he saw you doing to that zed. We don’t tolerate any of that kind of sick shit around here. And you have to be crazy if I’m going to let a zed leave my town if it’s not in pieces. In fact…”

There was another shot, and Edward had no idea what he was shooting at until he heard the body fall behind him. He turned to see Liddie on the ground. Most of her head was gone.

“Liddie!” he screamed. “Oh my God, Liddie!” He ran to her, forgetting to keep low and out of the line of fire, but Horton didn’t shoot again. Edward kneeled next to her and, ignoring the gore and brain matter that smeared all over his coveralls, clutched her body close to his. He looked into the ruins of her skull, searching for any hope that the shot hadn’t been the killer Horton thought it was, but there was no way. She was gone for good this time, and no old man in the middle of Illinois could possibly do anything to bring her back.

“Shit, you crying over there?” Horton yelled. “You better cut that bullshit out. You’ve got to be seriously warped in the head if you actually care that much about a corpse. You better step out from behind the truck real slow now, or else we’re going to come over there and make you step out.”

Edward went quiet. He held Liddie’s body for a few more second before he softly lowered her. One of her eyes had been blown from its socket by the bullet, but the other was still there and still open. He closed it.

“Wanderer, Goddamn it, you have to the count of three to surrender your fucking ass,” Horton said. “You hear me? One!”

Edward wiped what he could of Liddie’s brains from his coveralls, then wiped away the tears that had been forming at the corners of his eyes. He stood up without saying anything.

“All right, that’s good,” Horton said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Now drop the rifle and slowly get your ass over here.”

Horton’s truck was about fifty or sixty yards away and parked lengthwise across the center of the highway. Horton and Bert stood next to the truck with their rifles up and ready to fire. Neither of them took refuge behind the truck. They probably didn’t expect Edward to give them any trouble anymore. Edward walked toward them, not moving in any hurry but not taking it slow, either.

“Hey, I told you to drop the fucking gun!” Horton said. “Drop it now or we’ll drop you!”

Edward didn’t think twice as he threw the rifle out off the road. He didn’t need it anyway.

“Okay then, now just hold up and stop right there so I can send Bert to check if you have any other weapons.”

“I’ve got a weapon,” Edward said softly. “But I’d just like to see you try taking it from me.”

Bert gave Horton a puzzled look. “What did he just say?”

Horton shook his head. “I said stop!”

“And I said take if from me!” Edward said. He sped up, not quite moving at a jog but very clearly heading straight for Horton.

“Hell with this,” Horton said, and he pulled his trigger. The bullet hit Edward square in his chest. Unlike with his arm, he really felt this pain. All of a sudden all his breaths burned, and he thought he could feel air escaping from the gaping wound as he broke out into a flat run. But even without being able to properly breathe, Edward kept moving. It was easier than he’d expected. After all, he’d been practicing moving without breathing for almost fifty years.

“What the fuck!” Horton yelled as Edward jumped the last few feet toward him. Bert tried to shoot Edward, but the shot missed completely. Neither of them were prepared for this move, just like Horton wasn’t prepared for the next one. He brought the rifle up to ward off Edward’s attack, but the move left his hand exposed. That was all Edward had wanted anyway.

Horton screamed, more out of shock than pain, as Edward bit him. He dropped the rifle, but Edward grabbed it before it could hit the ground.

“Bert,” Horton screamed, “shoot this crazy son of a bitch!”

“I can’t,” Bert said. “He’s too…”

Edward turned around and shot Bert in the leg. Bert himself screamed and dropped to the pavement. The rifle fell out of his hands and Edward ran to take it before Bert could come to his senses and go for it again. Once he had both guns Edward stepped away from them both. He didn’t even bother to aim the weapons in a threatening manner.

“Don’t kill us!” Horton said. “Please, I can pay you.”

“It’s too late,” Edward said. “I’ve already killed you.”

Horton looked like he was about to say something, but no words came out of his mouth. He started to shiver noticeably. Bert watched this, completely unaware of what was going on.

“Billy, you okay?” Bert asked. “Holy shit, what the fuck did you do to him?”

Edward didn’t answer. He just watched as the son of a bitch who had killed Liddie dropped to the ground, shook violently for a few seconds, then stopped. That was all Edward really needed to see. He went over to Horton’s truck to make sure it still had the keys in it as Horton got back up. Horton didn’t even need any of Edward’s special orders to know that his dinner was desperately trying to crawl away.

Edward didn’t take any satisfaction as Bert’s screams turned to gurgling croaks, but neither did he cringe from it.