Zombies! (Episode 7): Conflicts of Interest (12 page)

***

What brought John Arrick’s mind back into focus was a sharp pain in the right side of his back. He cried out and lost his footing, tumbling forward and skinning both of his knees and the palms of his hands. The pain in his back disappeared and he got to his feet. As soon as he put one leg in front of the other, his back cried out in agony once again. When he grabbed it with his hand, he felt a slick wetness there. Tracing back the last few moments in his head, he realized that he’d been shot.

He’d been shot
.

He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself but that sent a fresh wave of torture shooting through his entire middle. He coughed once and tasted something thick and metallic. Not saliva but blood. He’d coughed up blood. Thinking to get help from the policeman, Heron, he tried to turn around, but he’d lost his bearings. It was a dark and wide open space and there was no way for him to know which way was which. The warehouse was on one side of him, or in front, or behind. He couldn’t tell. He was dizzy and something was drizzling out of the corners of his mouth.

All at once, he became aware of the sounds of footsteps. There were people here. Maybe they could help him. There was a funny smell to them, but it didn’t smell bad. Just funny.

Grabbing the first of the people (there were an awful lot of them), he pulled her face close. “Please help me. I’ve been shot.”

She didn’t respond. There was something wrong with her mouth. Her lips were all swollen. Or maybe that was just his perception. At first she tried to keep walking, but he held on as tightly as he could. Finally, she’d had enough of him and shoved him away. His grip fell away and he stumbled into another person, pleading for help as he did. The second person shoved him away as well. In fact, every person with whom he came into contact brushed past him either gently or forcibly. When the last of them had passed, he was left standing on his own in the open space watching their retreating forms.

“Won’t anyone help me?” he shouted. Actually, he thought he was shouting, but he was barely whispering. His lung had been punctured and he could hardly draw air to speak. “What’s wrong with you people?”

He stood there for a moment, swaying on his feet. Then he went to his knees, the thoughts in his head turning fuzzy from loss of blood.

God damned Americans
, he thought.
They only think about themselves.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry…” he mouthed, barely any sound coming from his throat now. “I’m sorry, dad. I’m sorry, mum.”

He fell forward onto his elbows and spit a wad of phlegm and blood onto the ground. “Malcolm,” he gurgled. “Tell me that you forgive me. Forgive me, Malcolm. I’ve failed you.” But somehow he knew that, though Malcolm might mourn him, he would never forgive him.

And so it was a fitting death for John Arrick, who, let’s be honest, was living on borrowed time anyway. As his last breaths issued forth with less and less push, he saw the white light of thoughtlessness and simply died there on the dirty ground…all by himself.

***

Awareness came rushing back to Peter. He’d had some notion of being dragged and bumped around, but he hadn’t been able to focus, nor could he move his arms and legs. Now, though, he was beginning to feel the sensation coming back. Still, the shock seemed to have sapped his strength. He felt as if the weight of an entire person was on top of him.

“Coming around?” he heard Melissa ask him from far away.

“What?” he muttered. “Did you shock me?”

“Mmm hmm,” she confirmed.

He tried to sit up but found that that perceived oppressive weight was more than just perception. There was a body on top of him. An actual body. When he turned his head, he found himself looking into its dead eyes. Panicking, he tried to push it away, but his muscles were still experiencing spasms from the effects of the taser and he couldn’t muster the strength. The man on top of him was heavy and Peter couldn’t budge him.

“Melissa, what are you doing?”

“You killed my son,” she said matter of factly.

“What?” It was starting to dawn on him. “Jason was suffering.”

“
Don’t you say his name!”
she screamed at him. “You don’t get to say his name.”

All of a sudden, the fingers on the hand on the body on Peter began to wriggle. Peter struggled harder. “It’s infected. Melissa, this is a zombie.”

She was nodding. He couldn’t get a good view of her but he could see that she was just casually nodding. And she was checking her fingernails. She was sitting comfortably in a chair nodding and checking her fingernails. Then she yawned. She fucking yawned!

“Please, Melissa, please,” he begged. “I was only trying to help. Really. There wasn’t anything else to do. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

It moaned. It moaned in his face. Its breath was so foul. So sickeningly foul!

“Yeah,” she said to him. “I’ll bet your sorry now. I bet you’ll be even more sorry in a couple of minutes.”

“What do you want from me? What can I do? Jas…Your son was going to die anyway. He was going to become one of those things and I saved him from that.
I saved him from that!”

"When I set that fire, I thought they'd trace it back to you for sure," she said absently. "I was really depressed when that didn't work out and that poor fireman was killed. That's your fault, you know."

"What?" he cried. "What are you talking about?"

She grinned. "But this is so much better, Peter. So
much
better."

Peter could feel the muscles in the zombie coming to life. Soon it would move. Soon it would…

Pulling the taser from her bag, she began to play with it in her hands. “I could save you, though. I could shock the zombie. What would you give me to do that?”

“Yes,” Peter cried, suddenly remembering the feeling of his breakdown months before. “Please, Melissa. I’ll do anything.”

She looked at him and smiled. And at the same time, the zombie came fully awake and took a small bite out of his neck. Melissa jumped forward and hit the zombie with the taser and then hit it again. And then again. It began to spasm uncontrollably and it took a lot for her to drag it off of Peter. He scrambled to his feet, tripping and falling twice before using a chair as leverage enough to come up. Then he reached for his neck and his hand came away bloody.

“Oops,” Melissa said sweetly. “Was I too late?”

“No,” he muttered in denial as opposed to an answer to her question. All he could think about was the disease. The sickness. The death. The rebirth. He would be one of them. He was going to be one of
them
! “No!”

“Goodbye, Peter,” she said, turning away. “Good luck.”

He looked at her, then again at his bloody hand. Then he charged at her. But he was weak and she was fully prepared. Turning nonchalantly, she shoved the taser into his belly and watched with a satisfied smirk and he went to the floor in a heap of uncontrollable flesh.

***

When Heron finally made it around the front of the building, they were loading Shawn into one ambulance and Marcus into another. There were police cars and vans everywhere. There were regular police as well as his own men. There was a big crowd of nervous spectators that they had corralled into the middle of the street. Zombie cops with rifles were firing upon a group that had come around the opposite side of the building. It was a group similar in size to the group that had attacked Heron. Apparently, someone had freed the stock.

Spinelli came up to him and gave him a quick report that he didn’t even hear. They hadn’t moved inside the building yet, but it was imminent. It suddenly occurred to him that he had left Smith behind while in pursuit of Shawn. Looking around, he spotted him close to the entrance, giving orders to some of the squad members preparing to enter the arena. Heron went up to him.

“You look like shit, Lieutenant.”

Heron nodded. “Are you okay? I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. The kid was your priority. I had a run-in with Culph, though. He got away with my gun.”

Heron dismissed it with a wave. “He saved my life. He’s earned his head start.”

While glad that he wasn’t being held accountable, he didn’t exactly share Heron’s opinion of the situation.

“Lieutenant?” Heron turned to see a uniformed patrolman coming toward him. Following close behind was Abby. “This lady says she knows you.”

“Anthony, what happened?” she asked him.

He looked at her and wondered. Why was she there? Why had she brought him there? He shook his head and addressed the officer. “Do you have a car?”

Confused, the man nodded. “Take her home.”

“Please, Anthony,” Abby said. “I need to…”

He shoved his hand into her face. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear anything tonight. Just go home to your family and explain it to them. You can explain it to me tomorrow.”

“Sir,” the officer said. “I can’t really just…”

Heron glared at him. “I said drive her home. Abby, you text me when you get there.”

Without further argument, the two of them walked off. Abby hesitated and looked back twice, but the policeman urged her forward. He didn’t like taking orders, especially from someone who wasn’t even his commander. But the zombie task force was the flavor of the month and Heron, as their lieutenant, was a big shot. Better to do what he said and deal with his own captain later.

“Are
you
okay?” Smith asked Heron as he began rubbing at his eyes and cheeks.

“I need to go, Greg. Can you clean this mess up? I know you have a home to go to also, but I don’t think I can… I just…”

“It’s all right, lieutenant,” Smith said, patting Heron on the shoulder. “You go and get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Heron shuddered. Tomorrow.

He walked the two blocks to his car. The entire perimeter was loaded with cops. Never in the history of the Bronx has those streets ever been safer. Getting in and turning it over, he rolled down the window despite the frigid air and peeled away from the curb. He started off toward home, but found himself changing course along the way. Before he knew it he was in Manhattan and pulling up in front of his headquarters. He walked in, nodded solemnly to the man at the front desk, and went for the elevator. The night’s events would generate a whole lot of paperwork but he didn’t go to his office. Instead he went to the basement. There was still a guard posted by Linda’s cage. Heron found a sleepy young man who didn’t have enough seniority to get out of that crappy shift. Heron dismissed him, but told him to hang around in case he decided he wanted to go home. When the man was out of earshot, the lieutenant pulled up a chair and sat four feet from the cage. For a while, he just stared in at Linda and she stared back at him.

“We killed a lot of zombies tonight,” he told her. “How many of them, do you suppose, were like you? You know. Special.”

She didn’t answer. She just stared at him.

“I didn’t want to hurt them,” he told her. “But they were attacking me. That makes it self defense, right? But they don’t know any better, do they? They’re just hungry is all. But not you. You know better. Why do you know better?”

He paused for a bit, just staring at her. Breathing. Then, "I won't hurt you, though, Linda. I won't let them get you."

He stayed like that for a long time, just looking at her and saying something every once in a while. And all the while, she just stared at him with her dead eyes, never moving, never even blinking. In the background, the young officer watched as Heron finally stopped talking and, resting his elbows on his knees, dipped his face into his hands. As each new guard came on duty, the last one pointed out the lone figure by the cage. No one could tell whether or not he was sleeping, but they were afraid to disturb him. So they left him and he sat like that until the sun touched the sky on Saturday morning.

***

“Thank you,” Abby said to the young officer as he pulled up in front of her home. “I’m sorry to be such trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all, ma’am.”

But she knew better. All the way back to her apartment, he’d sulked. She wasn’t sure whether he was upset at having been asked to play chauffer or having been forced from the scene of the action. Either way, she felt a little bad.

Getting out of the car, she sent Heron a quick text, to which he never responded.