Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 33

Is it still the United States? Bonnie wonders. Surely somewhere it must be.

She returns to her work, examining stalks and peeling back husks to check for insects. There are screen doors in the narrow access corridors between the agricultural wings and the Environments, but still, insects manage to get through. Despite their productive yield the Ecosphere is actually never very far away from starvation, and the loss of a single crop to insects could be- well, it just didn't bear thinking about.

Bonnie likes to work with plants. Not in the same way that Marly does- that appraising, sterile, scientific way-but in a sort of... holistic way. An organic way. Yes, that's right: organic. She smiles at the word. Bonnie feels a kins.h.i.+p to the plants, with the interrelatedness of all living things. She likes to feel the sunlight on her bare, freckled skin because it reminds her of the ironic combination of her specialness and insignificance. The sun is an indifferent ball of burning gases ninety-three million miles away, yet without it there could be no life. "We are all made of the same star-stuff," Carl Sagan used to say. Well, Bonnie feels that stuff in her very cells. It sings along the twined strands of her DNA.

She certainly doesn't miss s.e.x. She doesn't need s.e.x. She hardly ever even thinks about s.e.x.

She sits up and shuts her eyes. She breathes deeply. Om mani padme om. Who needs s.e.x when there is such pa.s.sion in as simple an act of life as breathing?

She finds a bug in a cornhusk and crushes it between thumb and forefinger.

Leonard Willard takes everybody's s.h.i.+t every day. He puts it in phials and labels it and catalogs it; he a.n.a.lyzes it and files the results. He operates and maintains the waste-reclamation systems and biological and mechanical filtering systems. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. If no one did it, the Ecosphere wouldn't work. Leonard likes to think of himself as the vital link in the Ecosphere's food chain. Filtration is his life. Ecosphere gives him an abundance of opportunity to feel fulfilled: there are filtration systems in the sewage facilities, in the garbage-disposal units, in the water-reclamation systems; there are desalinization units between the Ocean and the freshwater marsh; there are air filtration units, and air is also cleaned by pumping it beneath the Ecosphere and allowing it to percolate through the soil from several areas.

Leonard loves to purify things. To take a thing that is unusable in its present form, and by pa.s.sing it through buffers and barriers and filters, distill a usable, needed thing-that makes him feel useful. Needed. Staff couldn't breathe without him. Staff couldn't drink without him. Without Leonard, staff couldn't take so much as a healthy s.h.i.+t. Without Leonard, the s.h.i.+t would never hit the fans.

Leonard has Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph system. Years ago radiation therapy made all his hair fall out and stabilized his condition enough that he could be put on chemotherapy, which only made him stupid and violently ill for two days out of every month. He began putting on weight again, and his hair grew back in, even thicker than before, and the doctors felt encouraged that his condition had stabilized. Somehow his body learned to live with the disease.

Or, from a different perspective, he thinks (reaching a gloved hand into a water conduit to withdraw what looks like a dirty wet air-conditioning filter), the disease has allowed his body to live. So that it can continue to feed. This is why Leonard rarely worries about the things that roam the Outside, the things Bill has dubbed carnitropes. He doesn't worry about them because his body is being eaten from the inside. Or, to distill it in a very Leonard-like way, there is s.h.i.+t in his blood, and he can't filter it out.

He shakes the wet filter over a plastic sheet. Ropy black strands drip down. Leonard cleans the filter with a compressed-air hose, returns it to the conduit, then bundles and twist-ties the plastic sheet.

Walking with it dripping to the lab, Leonard realizes that there is nowhere else on Earth, anymore, where he could perform his job. Leonard feels he is the most realistic of all the Staff-and he knows what it's like outside their brittle little environment. Though he helps maintain the station, and therefore the illusion the station represents, he understands intuitively that his reasons for doing so are quite different from theirs. They maintain Ecosphere as a denial of what has changed Outside. He maintains it as a triumphant affirmation of the same. As above, so below. None of the others, being physically fit, can appreciate this. Therefore none of the others can adequately appreciate Leonard.

But he keeps up a cheery facade. It's important to him that he do this.

In the lab he unbundles the plastic and breathes deeply. That is the stuff of life, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Deke and Haiffa are f.u.c.king on the thirty-foot beach. Deke and Haiffa are always f.u.c.king somewhere. "Oh, look," Haiffa says. She points, and their rhythm halts. Deke rolls his head to look out on the water, not minding sand that grinds into his brush-cut hair.

"Don't see nothin'," he says.

"A fish," she says. She sets her hands on his chest and resumes.

"Fish on Friday," he says. "Maybe I'll hook 'im. What's today?"

"I don't know." Her accent, which used to charm him, is invisible to him now. "Wednesday."

"Anything-Can-Happen Day," he says, and arches his back as he begins to come.

Above them on the roof, Dieter the marine biologist watches through the gla.s.s. Sometimes the Ecosphere to him is a big aquarium. He watches Deke and Haiffa not from a need to accommodate voyeurism so much as from a desire to alleviate boredom. The first couple of months, everybody went at everybody else in various combinations, then settled into a few pairings that dissolved, either from attrition or from entropy, and now everybody is more or less an environment unto his or her self. In this they are like the scientific wonder in which they all live, but which none calls home.

Dieter is supposed to be cleaning solar panels. Dust from the Arizona desert acc.u.mulates on the Ecosphere's gla.s.s-and-aluminum roof, and when it is thick upon the solar cells, the station's power supply is diminished. But there are a lot of solar-power cells, and it is a hot July day in the Arizona desert. Dieter takes frequent water breaks.

Below him Haiffa and Deke seem to be finished, and he looks away. He stands and puts his hands on his hips, turning to take in the gleaming, sloping geometry of gla.s.s and aluminum that is the station. Ecosphere is built into the side of a gently sloping hill; the rain forest uphill is forty feet higher than the desert downhill, which is also nearly six hundred feet distant. Hot air rises from the desert and flows uphill; condensers in the rain forest cool the air and separate the moisture. It actually rains in the indoor rain forest.

Dieter looks at the terraced Aztec pyramid of gla.s.s and aluminum that caps the rain forest. What would it feel like, he wonders, to jump from the top?

A sense of freedom, the exhilaration of weightlessness, and then the ground, stopping all thought. All worry. All pain. All fear.

But an eighty-foot fall might not kill him. And even if it did, he'd just get back up and start walking around again. No, a bullet in the brain is about the only way to go, he thinks laconically, bending to pick up his rags and economy-size bottle of Windex. Shame Bill had to have the foresight to lock up the guns they obtained on that one expedition to Tucson, a year ago.

He looks left, over the edge and down at the parking lot behind the human habitat. The Jeep Cherokee and the Land Rover are still there. It would be so G.o.dd.a.m.ned easy. Just get in, crank up one of those babies-might need to juice up the battery, but there was plenty of that to go around-put her in gear, and f.u.c.king go.

He'd do it in a minute, too, if there was someplace to f.u.c.king go to.

And Marly. She climbs down from a tree, drops her pruning shears, unties her harness, and lets it fall at her feet. She mops her brow. It is amazingly humid in here. "Tropical" is such a misleading word, she thinks, conjuring mai tais and virgin beaches. In the higher branches of the tree she has been pruning it is not so bad; the eternal trade wind from the downhill desert is cooling. On the surface, though, the breeze is broken up by the thick foliage, and the climate is dank and wet.

She watches a squirrel dart along branches. They've been having trouble with the squirrels. They're dying out, and no one is sure why. Marly was against their presence from the start; they're filthy little rodents that carry disease and live by stealing whatever they can get their grubby little paws on. Everybody likes them because they have neotenic characteristics: big heads in relation to the body, big eyes in relation to the head. They look, in other words, like babies, and everybody likes babies. Well, small-scale evolution is taking care of the little s.h.i.+ts, so Marly guesses she showed them. n.o.body would listen to her because she's a botanist, which everybody knows is just a fancy word for gardener. Have you met Miss Tsung, our Chinese gardener-oh, I do beg your pardon: Ms. Tsung, our Asian botanist.

She wipes palms on denim and walks from the rain forest to the spa.r.s.e growth near the beach. She pulls open a screen door and walks down an access corridor, then out the screen door at the far end. Bare-breasted Bonnie waves to her as she cuts across a corner of the Agricultural wing. Marly ignores her and enters the Supply section of the human habitat.

"Supplies, supplies!" she says.

From a closet whose door is marked ext stores she takes the two-man tent and a sleeping bag.

Walking toward the front door she meets Billthea.s.shole walking in. He stops in front of her, eyebrows rising, and does not get out of her way. "Again?" he says, looking at the blue nylon tent bag and rolled sleeping bag. "I don't know that I altogether approve of this antisocial behavior, Marly. Everybody needs his privacy-or her privacy-but you are actively segregating yourself from us."

She holds the camping supplies before her like a s.h.i.+eld. Her mouth forms an O as she mimics sudden recollection. "Oh, I am sorry," she says. "We were having the Tupperware party tonight, weren't we? Or were Haiffa and Deke going to sell us Am way? I forget."

"Grace tells me you didn't show up for your last two scheduled sessions." He rubs his jaw (tending toward jowls) with the span of thumb and forefinger. Of the four men on Staff, only Bill continues to shave-his badge of civilization endeavoring to persevere. Striking a blow for h.o.m.o gillette.

She laughs. "Who has? I don't have time for her bulls.h.i.+t. She's more f.u.c.ked-up than the rest of us. Just tell her it was my bad toilet training, okay?"

"I am merely attempting to express my concern over your lack of cooperation," he says with the mildness of psychotic conviction. "Everyone has to contribute if we're going to pull through-"

"Pull through? Pull through, Bill? What is this, some phase the world's going through? Going to grow out of it, is that it?"

"I think I understand your resentment toward authority, Marly, but you must see that some sort of hierarchy is necessary in light of-"

"Authority?" She looks around, as if expecting a director to yell "Cut!" "Why don't you do me a favor, Bill, and f.u.c.k off?" She shoulders past him.

"This will have to go into my report," he warns.

She opens the door. "More demerits!" she wails to the vegetable crops. "Golly. I'm-I'm so ashamed." She turns back to smile meanly, then tries to slam the door behind her. The hydraulic lever at the top hisses that she'd better not.

A last swipe with a dirty rag, and Dieter grins at his reflection. "I can see myself!" he says.

He collects the dirty rags scattered around him on the gla.s.s. Waste not, want not: the Golden Rule of the Ecosphere. He stands and surveys the surrounding Arizona desert. As an experiment in maintaining an artificial environment in the midst of an alien one, Ecosphere is immensely successful: They are an island of gla.s.s on the rusted surface of Mars.

He stretches cramped muscles and breathes in the dry Martian air. Dieter Schmoelling, naked to the alien plain, the only human being able to withstand- He frowns. Wipes sweat from his brow. Shades his eyes, squints, bends forward.

A tunnel of dust, a furrow in the desert. A giant Martian mole burrowing toward the invading gla.s.s island. A Martian antibody come to attack the invading foreign cell.

A car.

4.

Marly is pitching her tent in the downhill desert when the P.A. sounds an electronic bell: Bong! "All personnel to the fruit grove," commands Bill-thea.s.shole. Bong! "All personnel report to the fruit grove immediately." And clicks off.

What confidence, what a.s.surance! The son of a b.i.t.c.h just knows that everybody will show up there, bong! Marly thinks of not showing up, just to remind him that his authority lies entirely in their acquiescence, but curiosity gets the better of her. Despite her dislike of him, she knows that Bill wouldn't call them together in the middle of their working day for no good reason.

But what Bill thinks of as a good reason is not necessarily dreamt of in her philosophy.

Marly sighs, pulls up stakes, and walks around the bluff, past scrub, into savanna, beside the ocean, into the southern access corridor, across croplands, and into the fruit grove.

The others are already there, except for Bill. Their backs are to her as they look out the windows. "I suppose we're all wondering why he called us here," says Marly.

Dieter turns and beckons her over. She pulls an apple from a tree and heads toward them. She bites into the apple and Dieter frowns. She grins and offers it to him, Chinese Eve. His frown deepens, and she laughs at his seriousness.

He makes room for her and points to the ruler-straight desert road, but he really doesn't need to. Marly can see the car heading for them. It's only three or four miles away.

"Should've baked a cake," she says, but inside she feels a pang, something tightening.

Bill joins them, holding a double-barreled shotgun. Her heart slams, and for a moment she is certain Bill is going to kill them all. This is it; she knew it would happen someday- Deke steps forward and takes the shotgun from Bill's hands. Bill is so surprised by this... this usurpation, that he allows him to.

Deke breaks the shotgun and removes the corrugated red plastic sh.e.l.ls. He returns sh.e.l.ls and broken shotgun to Bill, shakes his head in contempt, and steps back.

"They'll probably pull into the parking lot," says Bill. "I'm going out on the roof, in case they try anything." From a back pocket he pulls out a slim walkie-talkie. He hands it to Dieter. "I'll call you if I need you," he says. He turns to Leonard. "Talk to them over the P.A. in the monitor room," he orders. "Find out what they want and get them out of here. Ladies-"

"We'll make coffee," suggests Marly.

"I want you to keep out of sight."

"I want a gun."

Bill shakes his head. He turns away and heads for the human habitat, where the airlock is. They follow him, since the monitor room is at the north end of the human habitat anyway. Marly catches up to Bill. "Then give me the key to the armory," she persists. "You're not taking it out of here so you can get your a.s.s shot off on the roof."

He frowns, but cannot fault her logic. He draws a many-keyed holder from a retractable line attached to his belt and selects a key. He gives it not to Marly but to Deke, then turns and trots ahead of them.

Marly glances back toward the apple trees. The car is perhaps two miles away.

Inside the habitat Bill veers right at a T intersection; the others veer left and climb a flight of stairs. They enter the monitor room-all but Deke, who grins at Haiffa, tosses the armory key, catches it, and hurries down the hall.

Camera One already stares unblinkingly at the asphalt parking lot. Leonard activates Camera Two and sends it panning. The others cl.u.s.ter at his chair.

"Check, check," says the walkie-talkie in Dieter's hand. "Do you read me? Over."

"Loud 'n' clear, man," replies Dieter. He rolls his eyes.

"I'm on the roof, making my way toward the agricultural wing where the cover's better. Over."

"Right. I mean, yeah... over?"

Leonard turns from the control panel. "I'm guh-guh-going to test the puh-puh-P.A. Ask him if he c-c-can hear it."

Dieter relays the message, and Leonard says "T-testing wuh-wuh-one t-two three," into the microphone.

"Loud and clear," says Bill. "Listen, if there's any-here they are. Over and out."

The car is a dusty black El Camino. They watch on Monitor One as it pulls into the asphalt lot, slows, and parks beside the Land Rover. The driver waits for the dust to clear. Over the speakers they can hear the engine idle, can hear it knocking after it is switched off.

The driver opens the door and steps out holding a pump shotgun. He turns, says something to a pa.s.senger (there isn't room for more than two in the El Camino), and straightens. He shuts the door and approaches the Ecosphere.

He is the first live human being they have seen in over a year.

"h.e.l.lo?" he calls. Squeak of feedback, and Marly winces. Leonard adjusts the gain. "h.e.l.lo, is anybody there?"

Leonard pushes a b.u.t.ton and Camera Two zooms in.

He is young-early twenties. His hair is dark, straight, s.h.i.+ny, tied in a pony tail, to his waist. Faded gray jeans with white-threaded holes in the knees below a long, unb.u.t.toned, black-and-white-checked s.h.i.+rt with rolled sleeves. Earring dangling from right earlobe.

"h.e.l.lo?" he calls again.

Leonard thumbs the mike switch. He clears his throat self-consciously and the man steps back. The shotgun comes up.

"Wuh-wuh-we hear you," Leonard says.

The man looks around for the source of the voice.

Leonard glances at the others. "Wuh-wuh-what do you want?" he says into the mike.

The shotgun dips, lowers. "Food. Just-food. Me and my wife are... we haven't eaten in a while-"

Deke arrives carrying an armload of rifles and ammunition. Silently he gives one to each of the other six, continually glancing at the monitor.

"-and our baby is pretty sick. We just want some food; we'll leave you alone, after."

Bonnie refuses a rifle. Deke shrugs. "Your funeral," he says.

"If we give them food now they'll only come back for more later," says Grace.

"Prob'ly with friends," adds Deke, handing Marly a rifle.

Leonard fiddles with the monitor controls. Camera Two pans left, centers on the El Camino, and zooms. Leonard adjusts the focus. There is a young woman in the holding a bundle that might be a baby.

Leonard looks at Dieter, who shrugs.

On Camera One the man waits.

Leonard frowns and thumbs the mike again. "How you nuh-nuh-know we w-were here?"

A breeze billows the tail of the young man's s.h.i.+rt. "There was an article in the paper," he says. "In the Tucson library. I thought maybe you were still here." He looks around and wipes his brow. "Hot out here," he says.