Waking The Zed Part 6

Right now, Hercules tried to figure out how he could handle the morning's usual rush by himself with no electricity. A frugal man, he could certainly afford to close the popular cafe for the day, but he hated to disappoint his regulars. Some of the older folks had been coming here for breakfast or lunch several times a week since his parents had opened the place three decades ago. Hercules felt a duty to be ready to serve them strong coffee, sweet pastries, or a hearty country breakfast.

Within an hour, the place could be full of breakfast customers, and he still had no power, much less a selection of pastries to serve them. The two waitresses and the morning cook had not appeared yet either. While Hercules was happy to pitch in to help with any job in his small cafe, there was little chance he could handle food preparation and serve customers. Without electricity he would not be able to collect credit card payments either. If the situation did not improve quickly, he might just have to close the cafe for breakfast for the first time in his memory.

He thought he should just close the cafe now and venture out in the delivery van to find Marina. Then he thought he would delay the trip until at least one of the employees showed up to relieve him. They might have some information about the situation, and it seemed too impulsive to venture out without any knowledge about the world outside.

Besides, he still felt groggy from so recently being roused and skipping his shower. All he could do right now was light the gas burners to boil some strong Greek coffee for his own breakfast. The grinders were electric, and he did not have enough finely ground coffee to serve more than a few customers, but he had plenty for himself.

They had run out of fresh pastries yesterday before the lunch rush even ended. He had meant to ask Marina to make a larger batch this morning as the place had gotten increasingly busy. He had even meant to ask her if she knew anybody who could be trained to help her. In the last few years, the older neighborhood had gotten more popular, and The Mediterranean had really outgrown the small staff his parents had always relied upon. Hercules scratched his head and figured he might be able to offer customers eggs and toast.

While he thought about handling his business this morning, Hercules added sugar, water, and finely ground coffee to a small pot for his breakfast coffee. He had originally entered the cafe's kitchen from the stairs that led to his small upstairs apartment. In all this time he had not actually entered the dining room or looked out at the street. He remembered that Marina usually unlocked the front door when she arrived so the waitresses and morning cook could get in.

Perhaps they are locked outside and I have not been able to hear them knocking. He should let them in and offer them coffee. If they did show up, whether or not he decided to conduct business, Hercules decided to give each of the women some money from petty cash to compensate them for their lost tips. He would also let them punch in for the day, and he could punch them out later so they would still be paid. He had learned from his parents that it was always good business to treat employees as fairly as possible. He had not thought to clock Marina's time, but he could do that later. Then he recalled that the electronic time system would not work without electricity anyway. Hercules shrugged. He would figure something else out.

He turned down the flame on the burner under his coffee before making his way out of the kitchen. Daylight already streamed in through the barred windows. He made out several indistinct shapes on the street which was unusual for this time of the morning. Normally people would enter the cafe in small groups when they first opened, but he still had the better part of an hour before that would happen. Maybe the loss of electricity and the number of people on the street were related. Was there something he should know?

Hercules casually stepped up to the window to get a good look at the street. The scene was so shocking that Hercules stared in open mouthed horror. A p.r.o.ne woman crawled on the ground directly in front of him. A man pa.s.sed her without even glancing down. The man dragged his leg and his head seemed perched on his neck at an odd angle. Hercules looked back down at the woman and she seemed to be missing part of the back of her head. Her hair and scalp had been sc.r.a.ped off, and he could see the white bones of her skull. He forced himself to look beyond the part of the sidewalk where he had set out a few tables and chairs for diners who preferred to eat outside on pleasant days, and he saw stopped cars with about a dozen of the injured looking people moving slowly between them. The lurching man brushed into one of Hercules's ornate sidewalk chairs and knocked it over without pausing.

What horror is this? Has somebody dropped a bomb on the city?

He had the initial thought to venture out to help the p.r.o.ne woman, but a sudden flash of memory stopped him. His grandmother had frightened a young Hercules into behaving with stories of the Twice Dead from Greek legends. She even had an old book with engraved images that reminded him of the b.l.o.o.d.y spectacle in front of him. He knew enough of the old language to struggle through the ornate book and his grandmother had filled in the gaps.

Necromancers, or witches, could revive the newly dead for advice or favors before returning them into the underworld. He had not thought about those stories for years, but suddenly the image had popped into his brain.

His grandmother had fancied herself as a sort of a white witch, and the rest of the family mostly put her claims down to eccentricity. But as a child, Hercules had a creative and sensitive nature, and her stories sparked his imagination. Plus when Hercules was a child, a steady stream of visitors called on her. She seemed able to produce cures for everything from high blood pressure to depression.

At least that's what her clients claimed. Hercules own mother had mostly insisted on taking him to a regular doctor for childhood checkups and treatments. His own mother was a modern woman, and she insisted that the old woman's tinctures only made people feel better because the healing herbs had been dissolved in strong alcohol.

How had the dead been revived? He thought it had something to do with pleas to the old G.o.ds, but perhaps one of the narratives had mentioned a potion too. More importantly, he remembered that the dead had been sent back to the afterlife by burning them on a funeral pyre. Since these creatures seemed mobile despite various severe injuries, Hercules wondered if there was another way to rouse them. As he contemplated this fantastic scenario, he stared at the street in wide eyed horror.

He finally tore his eyes from the street and glanced up. He believed he saw the shadow of a woman staring down at him from a second floor window across the street. The apartment had a small balcony but the woman did not venture outside. He wondered if he knew her. He knew she could not make out his features because he had the windows treated to block light from the outside. He could see out, but people on the outside could only see shadows from the cafe.

None of the creatures seemed to pay him any attention, but he stepped back from the window. He wondered if the old book had been left in the small apartment over the shop or if his parents had taken it with them to Florida. He doubted his mother would bother to pack such a thing, and his father never bothered with what he called women's lore.

Then he recalled again that the Twice Dead had been revived because the dead were supposed to know everything. They were used as oracles before being sent back to the underworld. He did not dare open the outside door to listen, but it did not look as if the amblers in the street had anything to say. As Hercules had observed them, they seemed brainless and without purpose. This might be something else, but also more unlike anything else in his experience than to his grandmother's stories of the Twice Dead.

Hercules did not own a gun. He had long ago resolved to protect himself with a good alarm system, heavy locks, and the resolution to give any thieves whatever money he had on hand. So far the alarm system and locks had thwarted the few burglary attempts he had suffered.

All he had on hand was an old hunting bow that had been handed down from his grandfather. It was a beautiful hand carved artifact from the old country and he had it hung on the wall with a quiver of twenty arrows. Back when Hercules was a child his grandfather had taken the boy out to the country so he could practice shooting at targets.

Hercules remembered asking during one hunting trip, "Are we ever going to actually hunt anything?"

"You want to hunt something?" his grandfather asked. "Ah, maybe I am a spoiled old man. But I prefer to take pictures of the beautiful wild animals. I'll get my meat from the store if it's all the same to you."

"I hadn't thought about that," young Hercules had replied, agreeing seriously. "I guess if I had to kill my own food, I'd stick to hummus." Then both he and his grandfather had laughed.

But Hercules had learned the hunting bow could shoot st.u.r.dy bolts with surprising power; especially know when strung with modern fibers. He had learned to shoot well enough to send bolts right through wooden targets. He knew this type of bow could penetrate armor or skulls. It was especially effective because each arrow was tipped with a razor sharp steel head as fine as Hercules' best chefs knives. Hercules grandfather had told him that a skilled archer could shoot arrows as fast an armed gunman. Of course, that was in the days before automatic weapons were so prevalent on the streets.

Hercules nodded at the thought and pulled his bulk back up the stairs to fetch the bow and quiver. He had forgotten that a st.u.r.dy hunting knife and a short ax were sheathed on the same strap that held the quiver. Those seemed like useful tools for a man in the woods, or in the midst of an urban apocalypse.

After a quick glance through the closet, he also found the old book which his grandmother had claimed was the source of most of her knowledge of the old wisdom. It was wrapped in its own finely tooled leather bag. He climbed back down to the dining room, glanced out the window to find the scene unchanged, and then remembered the coffee.

He set the bow, quiver, and dusty old book bag on a booth so he could read by the light of the window. Just a year ago he had the windows treated so they let light in, but looked shaded from the street. His father had been against it, saying that seeing the busy cafe would attract more business from the outside. But the salesman had told him it was energy efficient and would save on utility bills in the future. Hercules wanted to invest in money-saving and ecologically responsible ideas so he had the windows treated. Just now that investment had saved him from being seen by the Twice Dead on the streets and seemed like a fortuitous decision.

Hercules had left the st.u.r.dy door untreated, but covered it with a decorative shade. He decided against uncovering the door to see if he could get a better view.

Then he returned to the kitchen to pour himself a double serving of strong Greek coffee. His grandmother had always joked that this stuff had the power to wake the dead, so perhaps it would fortify him.

He opened the small cooler over the counter and found a few slices of pita bread, yesterday's leftover hummus, and some b.u.t.ter. It would have to do for his breakfast. He took a moment to warm the bread on the gas burner. Then he settled himself in the customer booth, something he rarely did. He picked at the food, and sipped his coffee while trying to learn more about the Twice Dead.

He struggled with the old language, wishing he had his grandmother here to refresh his memory of a character here or a word there. It was hard to concentrate on such a difficult task while those things were lurching about outside and poor Marina was missing. But somehow it seemed important.

Zed Dawn.

Pam honestly felt surprised when she woke up in an ordinary bed. She did not appear to have any abnormal cravings for human flesh. She was not in the rain ditch, a frozen tank, or even back in the military hospital ward either. The bed felt soft and luxurious, and not like a hard cot or slab. She guessed the whole drive off the military base could not have been an awful nightmare. She opened her eyes slightly. This light only intensified the awful headache with seemed to start at her hairline and extend all the way down to her toes. Pam heard somebody groan, and it took a moment before she realized that the sound came from her own mouth. Her throat felt dry and her voice seemed to come out as a pained croak.

Somebody had cleaned her off. Instead of wearing her stained and smelly work clothes from the day before she seemed to have been dressed in a large undershirt and a modest robe. Captain Crawford's gruff voice sounded distant but clear. "Ms. Stone, are you awake?"

"Oh," Pam said, peering around at the small and neat bedroom she had somehow ended up in. "Are you here to murder me?"

"No, I'm not here to murder you," Captain Crawford said. "You obviously misunderstood a conversation you should not have heard. Though it appears from the holy havoc those things have caused it would have been smart to shoot first and ask questions later. I just wanted the area secured, and I didn't act fast enough."

"What happened last night?" she asked. Her voice seemed to emerge from her throat like a croak when she spoke. "I'm still a little fuzzy." She rubbed her head and winced when she found the spot where she had struck the big rock.

"You stole Corporal Gordon's vehicle, and he gave chase. That ended up being a lucky thing for you as he extricated you from what would have been a terminal situation and hauled you back here. Your hero is actually in my own kitchen making coffee, eggs, and toast right now for breakfast. This place lost electricity, but we still seem to still have gas to power the stove."

"Did I get bitten?" she asked because with the ma.s.s of sc.r.a.pes and bruises all over her body she had no way to sort out one thing from the other. Now that Captain Crawford had mentioned food, she did smell coffee. She thought that a hot cup of coffee and about a half dozen pain killers would be just the thing for her right now. Pam swallowed and her throat felt dry.

"You do not appear to be bitten or have the immediately terminal form of the infection," Crawford said. "In other words, you don't have symptoms. The truth is, I found out later than I tested positive for the virus just like you did, but also don't appear symptomatic. I'm sure I wasn't bitten, so it must also be airborne. Testing positive for the virus does not appear to produce symptoms, at least it hasn't yet. Right now, you're just lucky that you didn't get a concussion when you fell. You were covered with gore when Gordon extricated you, but that alone doesn't seem to be enough to trigger the symptoms either. At least, it wasn't enough to trigger symptoms in you yet. So there's some good news."

Despite her awful headache, Pam tried to consider the little evidence she had to understand the infection better. She closed her eyes again. Concentrating seemed to increase the pulsing pain in her head. She groaned. "We still need Dr. Klein's research." Then she squinted to pry her eyes open again and peered at her companion.

He stood by a window, watching the street. From her vantage point on the bed, it appeared that they were on the upper floor of some sort of an apartment building. A similar building stood across the street. "You said you had people that were better qualified than me to help you. That's what I heard. Where are they?"

"I'm still in agreement there," Captain Crawford said. "That wasn't an insult or anything. But you're only a graduate student, and you only functioned as a paid intern. Surely there are experienced experts the US Army could command to help out. Maybe some of the other doctors on Dr. Klein's original virus blocker team would be able to help if we can find them."

"There were senior scientists working at Future Faith," Pam said. "There weren't too many because Dr. Klein's personality and her type of business did not seem like a magnet for really qualified researchers. But I'm sure there were a few. I mostly just had contact with her though."

Captain Crawford paused and sighed. Pam wondered why it would be a problem for the long arm of the US Army to find a few famous scientists and haul them in.

"We had time to do some checking. There were three other scientists at Future Faith," he said. "One was a medical doctor who lost his license in a distasteful scandal after a bout of drug abuse and alcoholism. The other two had doctorates, but they were not MDs. From what we could find out before the Internet went dead, neither were particularly renowned as scientists or publishers. At this point, you probably won't be surprised to learn that they both lost tenure at the local university for one reason or another before Dr. Klein gave them a job."

"Where are they?"

"The two professors are amount the confirmed dead and the disgraced medical doctor is reported as missing," Captain Crawford said with a shrug. Pam blew out a sigh and nodded.

But then Captain Crawford continued, "On the other hand, I'm a pretty good judge of personal. You did manage to evade the creatures in situations that would have taken most people down. You even managed to escape a military compound. All along, you gave us sensible advice though we weren't prepared to listen. When the situation became untenable, you did the sensible thing. You ran away. You remained loyal to poor Paul even when he became a liability. That may have been an error in judgment, but you had no way to know it at the time. Those are the qualities of somebody I'd want on my team. Dr. Klein didn't seem to be too picky about her permanent staff but she was picky about her interns. "

"Dr. Klein liked to surround herself with smart people just so long as they weren't smarter than she believed herself to be. The permanent scientists all had issues, and she figured the interns wouldn't be around too long." Pam paused because speaking seemed to make her chest ache. Then she said, "But I guess that's not important right now."

"There're just a few problems we need to solve."

"Is there a way to contact these other scientists? You know, can you get to the really famous and credible ones?"

Captain Crawford actually smiled then. The expression did not seem to fit his normally severe face. Even though his lips turned up, the expression also seemed to lack any real humor. He just seemed pleased and pained at the same time with Pam's question.

"That's another problem. The phones don't seem to be working at the moment. Even if I had the number for a guy like Dr. Levi or Dr. Winn, I couldn't get through to them. It looks like you are the scientist we have to work with. I think you have the potential to rise to the occasion though."

Pam was in no mood to be flattered at the moment. She was still trying to untangle the situation in her head, and the pounding headache did not help to clear her thinking. "Where are we?" Pam asked. "Why are we here?"

"This is my own off-base apartment. As for the other question, if you can stand up, it would be easier to show you than tell you," Captain Crawford said. He moved over to the bed to extend a large rough hand to help Pam get up. When she sat up a wave of dizziness threatened to overtake her. She moved slowly, favoring the sharp pain in her head and duller aches in a hundred other places. Crawford got her to her feet and led her to the window. "Brace yourself for this," he said.

At first Pam looked straight across to see residential apartments which loomed over the streets. For some reason Captain Crawford and Corporal Gordon had holed up in an old residential neighborhood. "Why aren't we at the base?"

"Gordon couldn't make it back to the base. That was a lucky thing because the base was so overrun I had to leave myself. Mistakes were made and a dozen checkpoints were overrun. We managed to coordinate a midnight rendezvous back here at my own apartment. Even then, I had to clear out the hallways while Gordon carried you. It was no easy night."

"What do you mean when you say you had to clean the hallways?" Pam asked, still squinting at the buildings on the other side of the street. It looked like early morning. She could not see any activity in the buildings though most shades were drawn closed.

"Look at the street," Captain Crawford said. He still propped her up with one large hand around her shoulder.

Pam looked down and then immediately took a frightened and stumbling step back from the window. She might have fallen if Crawford had not held her up. They were only one floor up from the street. A dozen feet below the crowds of Zeds ambled about aimlessly. Some walked slowly like they had a destination in mind but no sense of urgency. Others mostly stood still. A couple seemed to lurch about in pointless circles. Two of them dragged themselves across the street because they seemed to have lost the use of their legs. Many of them had visible injuries or limbs that hung at awkward angles. Most had some sort of clothing, though one man only wore briefs and a few women had skimpy nighties.

None of them paid any attention to each other.

A few cars had stopped on the street but no vehicles appeared to move. The creatures had not thought to look up, but they might if she opened the window to make herself more visible. They could be attracted by noise and movement. For all Pam knew they might even be able to smell her. The delicious odor of good coffee emanated from the apartment's kitchen. She wondered if she would smell like breakfast to the creatures.

Directly across the street, down at street level, there was a small cafe called The Mediterranean. A couple of chairs and tables had been set out on the wide sidewalk, but a few of the chairs had been tipped over. A p.r.o.ne woman feebly dragged herself across the sidewalk in front of the cafe's window. Gore matted the back of the woman's head.

The store's sign was dark, and so were the windows, but Pam thought she saw the shadow of a rotund man peering out from behind the reinforced and barred windows. Even from her vantage point, the shaded figure's actions appeared deliberate, and not like the motions of the dead things that shuffled and ambled and crawled around below. The creatures looked more like a group of some type of handicapped insects, moving aimlessly from place to place. Though Pam detected the shadow of the man across the street, the shadow did not seem to attract the attention of any of the dead things.

She believed the turned things could see, but she figured they could not really discern shadows very well. In other words, they could not seem to perceive a shadow and then automatically figure out it must be caused by a live person's movement behind a shaded window. The death and the virus might not wipe out their eyesight, but it must destroy a million connections between the brain and the eyes that allowed people to correctly infer things from small pieces of information. Even then, Pam was trying to figure out how understanding that could help them survive.

"It looks like there's a guy stuck in that deli down there," she said. "I saw his shadow behind the treated windows, but the creatures don't seem to notice."

"There are probably quite a few people trapped in all over the place," the captain replied. He glanced down at the cafe window and shrugged. "We really don't have the resources to sweep the buildings right now. The three of us have to keep ourselves safe while we make our way to Future Faith. Hopefully the base was able to call in reinforcements to try and contain the larger problem."

Although she found it the stuff of nightmares, Pam forced herself to continue to survey the scene on the street below. The figure in the window had disappeared, and she wondered if he had noticed her. If so, she supposed that trying to signal her was something he had wisely decided would be a bad idea. Any attempt to get her attention would surely draw the Zed's attention. The barred windows looked strong, but she had no idea how long anything like that would hold up against the weight of hundreds of those things.

She figured she could estimate a rough count of a couple of dozen of the things wandering around on the street and sidewalks. But some disappeared past her line of vision while others moved into her line of sight. She guessed there was no way to count the things. The supply of Zed appeared limitless. What if the whole city was like this by now? How had it happened so fast?

"How can we get back to Future Faith?" Pam asked. "How can we ever get out of here?"

"That's something we have to figure out," Captain Crawford said. "We have a vehicle parked in the garage here, but it might be challenging just to get to it."

"I never want to see that place again." She rubbed her temples. Pam had considered quitting her job and leaving the creepy place yesterday, before any of those creatures had risen. Now she had no idea where she would find the courage to force herself back inside even if they could overcome other obstacles.

"I understand how you feel, but you know this could be important. You're the one who convinced me it was important to get back to Dr. Klein's office. You saw the scene on the street below. Don't you think it's your duty to try and help?" Captain Crawford sighed then. "Besides, you're infected too. So am I. I expect a lot of others are too. It could just be a matter of time before the virus takes over. Don't you want to save yourself?"

Pam threw up her hands in a gesture of frustration. "It might be too late. On the other hand, maybe it's only too late after we start seeing symptoms or after the subject expires. We have no idea."

"Future Faith seems like the right place to start figuring it out then. You said the doctor tested her theories on animals. There have to be some notes or something."

"I never want to get out of this bed."

"What about your family? What if this spreads to them?"

"Alright, you got me there. Just give me a moment to process this, will you?"

Just then, Corporal Gordon stuck his head in through the bedroom door and cheerfully asked if they were ready for coffee. Pam glanced at the young soldier. He was young, but still a burly mountain of a man who easily stood over six feet two and must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. His weight all seemed distributed in his wide shoulders and a broad chest without an ounce of spare fat. She had not really paid much attention to him the night before.

But yes, this was the same man who had stood outside the vehicle she had stolen last night. She wondered how she had ever summoned the nerve she had displayed when she ran past him and took his car. His arms looked as thick as her thighs. No wonder he had been able to carry her unconscious body up a flight of stairs and into this apartment.

"Sure, I'd love a cup of coffee. If you could also sweeten that with an aspirin or six that would be great," Pam said as she slowly made her way back to the bed. "A shot of whisky might be good too. Otherwise, I take my coffee straight." She paused for a moment as settled back on the bed and considered her next words. Her head still hurt, but she felt a little better now that she had stretched out her muscles.

The young soldier regarded her curiously. He had obviously been aggravated with her last night when she stole his vehicle in the midst of a crisis. Now he just smiled blandly and waited for Pam to finish talking.

Then she said, "Oh, and thanks for saving my life. Also, I'm sorry about the vehicle. I've never stolen anything before, but I didn't think I had any choice. In fact, I really didn't have time to think at all."

"Happy to help a citizen, Ma'am," Gordon said in a mild voice. Despite his bulk, the soldier's manner seemed pleasant and his face appeared boyish. Pam figured that the young man had barely left high school behind. He was probably a few years younger than she was, and she was still regarded as young.

She imagined him suited up for a football game or wrestling match. Instead he wore military fatigues and heavy boots. A spray of freckles crossed his wide nose. He had close-cropped reddish hair and striking green eyes. She figured he was the type of amiable guy who was used to using his muscle to excel at sports, attract the attention of pretty young women, and protect weaker people from bullies.

When Pam thought about Captain Crawford, she immediately a.s.sumed he could be a killer. Hero was the word that came to mind when she thought of Corporal Gordon.

So far Pam had not been able to protect anybody, and had been barely able to save herself. She had no reason to mistrust the young man. He had, after all, chased her down to save her life. In her scientist's mind results still mattered. She glanced back at Captain Crawford. He hadn't been able to really save anybody either, and she still had no reason to totally trust him. He will do what is expedient, even if it is morally questionable. But maybe right now that is exactly what I need.

"I was pretty angry about the car theft, but Captain Crawford explained it later. I've got a sister back in Omaha, and I guess she would've done the same thing. That is, I'd like to think I would've helped you if you explained the situation, but looking back, I probably wouldn't have. I probably would've hauled you and your friend back to the infirmary, and that would've been a big mistake. In fact, drawing me away from the base could've saved my life. So, let's call it even."

He shook his head and displayed a flash of white teeth and a pleasant grin. His grin seemed much more natural than Captain Crawford's pained smile. The he frowned just as suddenly. The whole situation must be as confusing to him as it was to her. He gestured towards the bedroom window.

"Did you see the mess out there?" he asked. "You've got some kind of nerve, and it looks like you're going to need it."

Pam thought about the awful lurching things below. They seemed fairly indolent and purposeless now, but she remembered how they had turned into rabid beasts when presented with the possibility of feasting on her live flesh. Somehow I faced it yesterday. But I feel like a frightened fawn today. I just can't turn into one of those things.

"I'll try to help as well as I can, but you have to promise me something."

"Were not in the position to make promises," Captain Crawford said. "I've already told you we want to get you back to Future Faith. That's what you insisted on yesterday. We're prepared to listen to you, but I can't promise to always take your advice. You can be part of the team, and I'll make allowances because you're a civilian, but I'm in charge."

"Fine, you be in charge." Her voice was level but determined. She took turns making eye contact with each of the men to make sure they paid attention. Captain Crawford stood stiffly and Corporal Gordon stood relaxed and at ease.

"If I start to be symptomatic, I want you to promise to put me down like a rabid dog. I don't want to die today any more than I wanted to die yesterday, but I surely don't want to become one of those things. I want you to do everything you can to protect me so I don't get bitten. But if I do develop symptoms, I would like to kill me as humanely as you can, just like you'd do for a pet that got sick. Can you promise that, at least?"

Corporal Gordon nodded. "I surely wouldn't like to do that, but I think I can promise. None of us wants to become one of those." He paused for a moment, his young face wrinkled up in thought. "Now I know what they mean when they say somebody's better off dead. It never made sense to me before. I always figured I'd do anything to fight to stay alive." Then he stood up straighter and nodded. "I guess I'd like you to do the same for me." With that, he exited to room.