“You need to not get your asses chewed off by a zombie bear because somebody over my head thinks you’re cute,” said Bernie. “If one of my people says jump, you say ‘how high?’ If one of my people says freeze, you stop where you are, and you do not move. If you are bitten, we will shoot you. If you are scratched, we will shoot you. If you touch a bloodstain and then touch your mouth, nose, or eyes, we will shoot you. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Stacy, and there was a crisp alertness in her voice that made Michael’s heart sing. “Do you have Kevlar that we can borrow, or were you just planning to let us flush out the zombies with our soft, delicious bodies? We can roll with either option, but the latter gets you a slightly less positive report.”
Lieutenant Collins frowned at her. Stacy smiled genially back. Finally, he looked away.
“Kevlar’s in back, along with the rebreathers we’ll be using in enclosed areas.”
“Why?” asked Michael. “Kellis-Amberlee isn’t airborne in its negative state.”
“Breathing the air in a monkey house that’s been closed up for three years may not kill you, but you’ll sure as shit wish it had,” said the lieutenant grimly. “Now, all aboard that’s coming aboard. We have a lot of work to do before the sun goes down.”
“Yes, sir,” said Stacy. She opened the van’s side door, revealing three surprised-looking CDC operatives, and climbed in. Michael was close behind her. Lieutenant Collins shut the door behind them. They heard his door shut a few seconds later. The van started, and they were off.
The main body of the van had no windows, making it impossible to see how close they were to the zoo. Michael watched Stacy instead. She chatted and politely flirted with the operatives, asking them questions they probably shouldn’t answer and then charming responses out of them. It was like traveling back in time to the days when she’d done similar things at his faculty parties, only now the targets of her attention had guns instead of gradebooks. Yes. He had made the right decision. This was where she belonged now, in a setting so patently divorced from who she’d been before that she could be herself again.
The van pulled to a stop with a jerk. Stacy sat up a little straighter. “Are we here?” she asked. “Why did we stop?”
The door slid open, revealing the desolate sweep of the parking lot at the Oakland Zoo. “We’re here,” said Lieutenant Collins, unwittingly answering Stacy’s question. “Everyone, move out, find your assigned group. Masons, you’re wherever you want to be. Personally, I’d recommend wanting to be in the van for as long as possible, but as you’re civilians, that’s not my call.”
“Damn right it’s not,” said Stacy. She stood, as much as the van’s low ceiling allowed, and walked over to where Lieutenant Collins waited, offering him her hand. He took it automatically, and she used his arm to help herself down. Then she smiled at him, as dazzlingly as if he had been the one to offer. “Isn’t this exciting?” she asked, and removed the lens cap from her camera.
Michael followed more slowly, letting the three men from the CDC get out first. He was gathering his thoughts, trying to prepare himself. He was fairly sure that wasn’t possible.
He was right.
Three groups of soldiers had assembled in the zoo parking lot, each of them standing near a troop carrier. The three CDC observers had broken up and gone to their respective stations, their yellow biohazard suits standing out among the olive green. Michael raised his recorder.
“Domestic cleanup crews are in orange, zoo cleanup crew is in yellow. Are there other colors? Do they have a deeper meaning? Can the extent of local infection be ascertained by looking at the cleanup crews? Find out.”
“Michael!” He lowered his recorder and turned toward the sound of his name. Stacy was waving to him from some fifteen yards away, her camera in her free hand. She looked so natural in her Kevlar vest and hiking boots, like this was who she’d always been intended to be. It made his heart ache a little for her. How could it have taken him so long to see her clearly? “Come see what I found!”
“Coming,” he called back, and trotted over to her, feeling the disapproving eyes of Lieutenant Collins on the back of his neck as he moved. He’d have to find a way to flatter the man’s ego before the end of the day, or he’d never be able to get himself and Stacy onto another cleanup job. And he already knew that he wanted to get Stacy, at the bare minimum, onto another cleanup job. She was… lighter, in a way that he hadn’t seen for a very long time. It was almost like seeing his wife again.
Stacy had found a ball of garter snakes, tucked under the back wheels of an abandoned car. There must have been two or three hundred of the striped serpents there, all of them twisted together like an impossible macramé of slithering sides and flickering tongues.
“I’ve never seen one this big,” said Stacy, and took a picture. “What do you think happened?”
“Zombies aren’t particular about what they eat, but they tend to go for mammals first; the virus knows it won’t gain any traction with other creatures.” Thank God for that. Michael had spent half the Rising waiting for the first confirmed zombie eagle to swoop in and end what remained of the world. “Bears, coyotes—anything large enough to convert would have done a number on the small dogs and house cats. They removed most of the natural predators for these snakes, and the snakes thanked them by having a population explosion.”
“The ecosystem is recovering. It’s just changing at the same time.” Stacy snapped a few more pictures before turning to look at the zoo gates. The CDC crews were walking toward that distant entrance, moving slowly, methodically, like they had all the time in the world. “Can we go in?”
“Yes, if we stay with the cleanup crews and don’t get in the way. That’s what we’re here for.”
Stacy’s smile was sudden and electric, and took Michael’s breath away. “Then let’s go.”
They walked back to the others side by side, catching up with the CDC’s people about five yards outside the entrance. Stacy took pictures of everything: the gates, the bloodstained ticket booth, even a backpack that had somehow remained pressed up against the fence for who knows how long, bleached by the sun and battered by the rain. A piece of paper with the owner’s name written on it had been wedged under a little clear plastic “window” at the top of the bag, and it was still legible, even though Molly was never going to be coming back to collect her things.
Michael glanced at Stacy anxiously when he saw her photographing the backpack, waiting for the reality of another dead child to send her crashing into a fugue state. It didn’t happen. She moved straight to capturing pictures of the CDC troops as they cut the locks off the zoo gates, and he began, almost unwillingly, to relax.
The zoo was no longer a slaughterhouse—it had been too long since the initial outbreaks—but the signs remained, scribed in dried blood and bits of bone. Michael had seen enough zombie attacks to be able to read the story written in the stains. It was not a pretty one.
The three teams separated once inside, heading for different sections of the zoo. Michael hung back, waiting for Stacy to choose a direction, and then followed the group she was with, periodically raising his recorder to capture a few thoughts on the scene around them. It was eerie in its devastated stillness—not as eerie as the deserted streets of Berkeley, perhaps, but worse at the same time, because this was a setting he had never pictured in this manner. The zoo was supposed to be a place of education and joy, preserving animal life for future generations. Instead, it had become the same as everyplace else. It had become a graveyard.
They passed open-air enclosures meant to house the great herbivores, the antelope and zebras and giraffes. Some of them had been pulled apart on their artificial grasslands, bones scattered and bleaching in the sun. Others told a different story: Their bones were intact, pressed up against fences or collapsed at the bottom of protective moats. Somehow, Kellis-Amberlee had gotten to them, turning them into killers of their own kind, until starvation had finally taken
over.
Birds picked through the ruined habitats, crows with their casual strut, pigeons with their bobbing heads, and more types of duck than Michael had ever seen in one place. A flash of white flew by, and a heron landed atop the desiccated corpse of a black bear. It preened the feathers of its breast before striking a classic pose, neck bent, one foot drawn up against its body. Michael heard a click as Stacy’s camera went off.
“We’re going to have to burn the whole place to the ground,” said one of the men in green. “There’s blood everywhere.”
It wasn’t inaccurate. The blood had dried long since, and some of it had been worn away by the wind and the weather, but the traces still remained, marking the pathways of infection. It was a striking image. Michael captured it with his recorder, describing it in careful detail.
The day unfolded from there, bitterly predictable and viciously surprising at the same time. There was movement in the monkey house: The spider monkeys had an enclosure that featured plants they had been known to eat and enjoy in the wild, and somehow two dauntless monkeys had managed to turn this into survival. There were tooth marks on the bones that littered the floor. They had eaten each other not out of virus-induced hunger, but simply because they needed to stay alive. The monkeys were skeletons clothed in fur that rushed the glass when they saw the humans, shrieking and pleading with their high-pitched simian voices. The keepers had returned. The days of peace and plenty were sure to follow.
Michael averted his eyes as the soldiers went around to the back of the enclosure and put the monkeys out of their misery. The click of Stacy’s camera followed on the heels of the gunshots, punctuating the scene.
There was more motion near the reptile house. Michael watched in awe as the big alligator that had been hiding in its moat surfaced, blinked its reptilian eyes, and opened its mouth in what was either a greeting or a threat display. It was impossible to tell without getting closer, and none of them wanted to do that.
“How the fuck is that thing still alive, Lieutenant?” asked one of the men, looking shaken. “I signed up for zombies, not crocodiles.”
“It’s an alligator,” said another man. “They’re everywhere in Florida. We’re pretty sure they could survive a nuclear holocaust. They might glow, but they’d still eat your cat.”
“Alligators are reptiles; they can’t be infected,” said Michael. The big gator closed its jaws, watching them warily. It knew humans were a source of food, but maybe it also knew that humans were the reason it was here, in this cramped, stinking enclosure, instead of roaming free through the Everglades and ignoring the zombie apocalypse with the rest of its species. “Is there any way we can remove it before the zoo burns?”
“I’ll put it in my report,” said Lieutenant Collins. “I believe there’s going to be a second team that comes through and removes anything we’ve flagged as salvageable. They may not have a place to keep an alligator.”
Everyone was briefly quiet, looking at the big reptile wallowing in his moat. The alligator, having decided that he wasn’t going to be fed, sunk back below the surface of the water.
“We really fucked everything up, didn’t we?” asked Lieutenant Collins. The question didn’t seem to be directed at anyone specific: It was more asked of the open air, and the silence. Michael looked at him thoughtfully, and didn’t say anything.
The mission moved on.
There were more signs of life in the reptile house, although not many: Most of the snakes, lizards, and terrapins had long since surrendered to hunger and the elements. But a few had managed to survive, feeding on whatever they could find. The king cobra enclosure was smashed in. There was no dead snake inside. They left the reptile house quickly after that, all of them glancing into corners with the jittery unease of humans who had just been reminded how closely related to monkeys they were—how closely related to prey.
The last stop of the day was the zoo gift shop, which had been deemed the most likely place for infected to have taken shelter and potentially survived. It was connected to the outside; a broken window would have made it possible to den there while also leaving to hunt.
Stacy, naturally, was eager to get started. So when Lieutenant Collins barked, “Civilians outside until I give the all clear!” she sulked. Quite literally sulked, folding her arms and leaning against a clean patch of wall as she glared at the men now streaming into the gift shop.
“We should be in there,” she said, looking at Michael. “They’re going to knock everything over and mess everything up, and we’re not going to be able to get any good pictures.”
“I think they’ll be more careful than that,” said Michael. “Have you been able to get some good shots today?”
“Hundreds,” said Stacy. She stroked her camera the way she used to stroke their son’s hair. “It’s amazing. Some of these pictures… I never really wanted to be a journalist, but I think I could have won a Pulitzer if I’d taken pictures like this before everything got weird.”
Stacy’s pictures were generally amateurish in composition and framing, more family snapshot than striking vista, but Michael nodded all the same. The subject matter transcended the technique. “I was thinking I might write an article about all this. I’ve been taking notes all day, and if we combine them with your pictures…”
“Who would publish it?” Stacy shook her head. “I don’t think the newspaper is going to be a thing for a long time.”
“Maybe not ever,” said Michael. “I was thinking I could publish it myself. The Internet is getting more stable by the day, and I know how to put together a decent site. All the old blogging sites are pretty well overrun, so I’d have to do the HTML by hand until I can find a better client, but—”
“Do you think people would read it?”
“People listened to my broadcasts for all these years,” said Michael. “They’re more interested than anyone realizes. We all sunk into our own heads during the Rising. We had ourselves and the other survivors around us, if we were lucky. Now people want to expand again. They want to know about things they haven’t seen with their own eyes.”
Stacy pushed away from the wall. “Then we need to get them the full story,” she said, and went striding toward the gift shop, where the shadows of the soldiers moved against the windows.
Michael hesitated. Then he followed her. If this was where she needed to lead, he would follow.
He would follow her to the ends of the earth if that was what she needed.
Chapter 2
What We Found
BlogLife is proud to announce that we will be bringing you exclusive reports from everyone’s favorite duo, Michael and Stacy Mason, every Friday. You can’t get this anywhere else, folks! Learn about your new and reborn world through their practiced and trustworthy eyes.
—PATRICE SUMMERS, BLOGLIFE LTD., MARCH 15, 2018
Stacy, I’m scared. I can’t leave my house. I think… I think this is good-bye.
—CAROLYN SHIELDS
1.
“BlogLife just announced the partnership,” said Stacy. She sounded almost pleased, almost like she thought that something mattered. “We should start getting paid by the end of the month. I’ll be able to buy a new camera.”
“That’s excellent, sweetheart,” said Michael, looking up from his laptop. He was writing an article about their recent trip to the Shattuck shopping district. It contained so many historic buildings that no one had been willing to approve its burning, especially not with all the nearby houses empty and sealed off while the city was rebuilt; instead, the contaminated parts of the district were being replaced, one at a time, a shining new neighborhood rising out of the old.
Privately, he thought it was a waste of time and money. The new normal was not going to include outdoor shopping promenades and cafés with open-air seating. The new normal needed more fences, more overt signs of security. But it was a good image, the old world being torn away and then rebuilt, just like the people of Berkeley. His article would read closer to t
he official story than to his actual beliefs. There was no point in upsetting people. Not now. Not when they needed comfort more than ever.
“I’m still amazed that so many people want to read these articles,” said Stacy. “I mean, TV’s coming back, they’re even talking about reopening the movie theaters, and people are sitting at home, staring at screens full of words and pictures.”
“Both the words and pictures are improving steadily,” said Michael. He had been writing academically for most of his adult life. He was learning how to inject more humor and compassion, to edit the truth when necessary to make the story more palatable for an injured but healing world. Stacy’s photos were simplistically staged, but powerful all the same. How could they help being powerful, with the subject material she had to work with? And she, too, was getting better, thanks to practice and tutorials. One day, she might even be good.
“Do you think this trend is going to last?”
Michael paused, really thinking about his words before he answered. Finally, he said, “Yes, I do. The last thing the media taught us in the old world was that we couldn’t trust them. If it hadn’t been for me telling my students, and you e-mailing your friends, we would have lost even more people than we did. Where were the educational programs when everything was falling apart? Where was the trustworthy, mellow-voiced newscaster telling people to aim for the head? The government tried so hard to keep people from realizing what was going on that they broke everyone’s trust. People want something new to trust. They’re turning to the bloggers who somehow kept posting during the dark days, the ones who were in places with reliable wireless all the way to the end. They’re turning to the YouTube stars. And they’re turning to people like us. It’s a brave new world. We’re on the ground floor.”
“I’d like to try video,” said Stacy, and while she was trying to sound disinterested, Michael could hear the yearning in her words. “I think it would be good to show people in a little more detail what’s going on. Maybe I could go for a walk around campus.”