Zombie (part II)

The small lady standing in front of me still wore a nightgown not because she was going to bed early, but because she probably didn't take it off since morning. She was still young, though wrinkles and dark circles seized her face. She had long curly red hair contrasting with the whiteness of her skin. She was anemically thin. The typical woman you see who once had been quite attractive but who now is a mere ghost of how she used to be.

"Henry? Where were you? Do you know what time it is? I waited you for a whole year and you would never come."

I took off my coat and threw it on the couch by the door.

"I had extra work..."

"You work overtime every day. Every single day! I was going to prepare something, but you probably already ate out anyway."

"Yeah..." I lied.

"See? You always eat out. You're always late. You're never here! I bet you're going out with another friend of yours. Like that other time."

Jane's newer mania was finding an imaginary girlfriend for me and inventing I visited her whenever I was on duty or somewhere else.

"Jane ... There was an emergency..." I said rolling my eyes as I was headed for the fridge to see if it had anything to drink.

"And you couldn't call!? On this side I called like crazy and you didn't answer. Why do you leave the phone off? If it was just work you'd answer!"

I let out a sigh as I went to the fridge and reached for the last bottle of beer that was almost empty.

"I don't know why you never talk to me! You leave me in the dark. You leave me in the dark so you can..."

Jane stopped arguing as she saw me drinking straight from the bottle. She hated it when I drank at home for no specific reason.

"What are you doing? Is this time to celebrate something?"

I shrugged and went on. She failed to respond for a moment.

"You ... Alright. Ignore me. Drink alone!" she said with a bitter tune in her voice. She turned off the dining room's light and returned to the bedroom.

I don't even like beer.

But it's a great way to get her to end her loving welcome and go to her room.

After she left, I stared at the couch. The couch was where I was sleeping lately. All my belongings were thrown around the couch to make it more convenient to pick them up because she doesn't like me going into the room in the morning. In addition to the kitchen mess and the fact that the front light was burned out giving an impression of precariousness, a familiar scene came up to mind. One I witnessed that afternoon. I remembered the joke Joey told earlier.

"Looks like my room."

He said it when he entered the apartment that had been overturned before the suspect escaped. But he probably would not have imagined this phrase would fit the description of my room, or rather the couch in the living room where I used to spend my nights.

I couldn't help but to let a smile.

This lovely girl is my wife: Jane Dotson. Of course, she wasn't always like this. No one would ever stand her if she was always like this. Behavioral changes are made over time, and are created from interactions with other people. Which tells me I must have made a mistake at some point. It's true I don't talk to Jane in a long time. I never even told her about SAD or even the zombies. She thinks I'm a regular cop. To tell the truth I can't talk to her at all, because as you see, there's no room for conversation.

The correct thing to do would be cleaning the kitchen at least and also organizing my stuff so that I could at least have a decent night. But I was pooped out... Who cares about the mess?

I took off my clothes right there and without even a shower I laid down.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about my condition. If you had told me ten years ago I would be hating the time to go home and more excited about the time to go back to work instead I'd call you nuts. But if spending the nights meant that then I don't have why to look forward to them anymore. Maybe I really should start going to pubs and arriving later as Jane says ...

"Jeffrey Sprohic," former inmate of the neighboring Silverbay. Its apartment was messy as well but it probably wasn't living there. It must have just rented it to hide from something... Maybe to hide something. It must be sleeping in a suite hotel now ... I don't believe even the worst of criminals sleeps in a place like this abominable nest of random objects all scattered around...

In the dark my mind began to shift from me to Jeffrey Sprohic. Desperate to escape the police. I imagined a two-meter being stinking of carrion, messing its things up looking for I don't know what and then running out by the window. Not surprising, since the conventional policemen were chasing after it and then there was SAD...

"But before searching and running out the window, I'll pause my hurry to make a little mouth. I'll stop to eat a guy in front of my own door and only after that I'll continue to escape. It won't take me even ten minutes..."

A wry thought, but something that had not occurred to me earlier. That action made no sense at all. Even for a zombie.

The suspect ran from Club Jewel to that remote alley where it had rented an apartment, carrying jewelry in hand and with the police running after it. The conventional police claims to have lost sight of it, but it kept running to Marshmoore. A smarter being would do anything to hide somewhere, yet it decided to go straight to where it was staying. Which indicates it chose to run instead of hiding.

If it wanted to run, it had to go inside its original enclosure and pick up something that was of value and leave only after that. The downside of leaving its scent on Marshmoore is that SAD now knows its identity because of the tenant contract, but it overcomes the disadvantage it would have had if it had hidden rather than run away: the police would probably have already found it because of the dogs.

There is an aspect that can be attributed to stupidity or inexperience here: the fact that it fled by foot rather than robbing a vehicle. If it is a newly born zombie who is unaware it can be detected by smell, this would seem like a natural choice since it'd think it would draw less attention than with a stolen car. It thought it'd dump all conventional cops (and indeed it did) and would come to its hideout not expecting to be found. If it had expected to be found through the smell it would have used a car instead. Thus, it wasn't expecting it and was indeed a newborn zombie. In addition, the fact the apartment was all ransacked and the window was open points out it was in a hurry for some reason.

And if it was in a hurry hit would not have stopped to feed.

Zombies can go up to three days without starving, they are not like humans who can not hold even for eight hours. If it was really in a hurry it'd have left the victim for later. Was it starving? Hadn't eaten in weeks? Impossible ... If that were the case It'd have attacked the owner of the jewelry store who was alone in the stock. If the crux of the matter was its hunger it would have been careful not to attack anyone in front of its own dwelling.

Having preferred to flee by foot to try to outmaneuver the police can be attributed to the zombie's intrinsic stupidity, but the victim cannot be attributed to any level of stupidity. The fact that it made a victim in front of the rented apartment has to mean something. If it was in a hurry, why did it have a meal right there in the middle of the street with the short time it had?

I stopped to wonder "when would a zombie deliberately make a victim in front of its home?" When you're planning to leave such a place and never come back? That's why it took the belongings that mattered to him, as it was already planning to leave that place anyway.

Of course... Sprohic never thought of staying in Sproustown! It rented the place only until it got the jewelry and thought about leaving right after. Since it planned to leave town after stealing the jewels, it had no reason not to feed there. Quite the opposite by doing so it would be free to stay another three days without making an attack, giving it the time to settle in whatever city it plans to move to without drawing attention to itself.

Thinking this way., perhaps Sprohic is not as clueless as the average zombie. It should've been aware that later it would be identified by the smell and also that its identity would be revealed sooner or later. That's why it didn't bother to hide its renter data. After all a human being over two meters does not leave much room for hiding, there is a very short list of possibilities, false data would have been detected sooner or later. But it anticipated that by the time we could gather all the information to start searching it would be far away from Sproustown. This also explains why it preferred to flee by foot rather than by car: to outwit the conventional police. It knew it could not slip by foot if it was from SAD, but we would only begin chasing him after a few hours, and until then it had enough time to pack its things, eat its meal and prepare for its departure.

If my theory was correct it should be planning on stealing a vehicle and leaving on that same day.

I got up immediately and called as quickly as I could the robbing division. I asked if any vehicle theft had been reportered in the last two hours. After a while I was told:

"There was no car theft reported today, Lieutenant Dotson."

"Nothing?" You mean no one complained? Was there another victim, like it stole the car after murdering someone else so that no complaint could be made? But then someone would have warned the homicide division ... Could it had stolen a car with the owner inside? Someone would have reported a kidnapping ...

I made a few more calls thinking about such possibilities, and it seems that after the alley murder nothing more of unusual happened in Sproustown on that day. I had to recover my thoughts.

By then I was wide awake and not tired anymore. I was sitting in the chair at the dinner table lost in my thoughts. I decided to call SAD again before it became too late.

"Special cases division, how can I help?"

"Hello? Crane? Ah, good, you are still there. Listen ... I need you to do me a favor ... I need to get all the information on stolen cars from now until tomorrow morning, so please notify the theft division, okay? Tell them it has something to do with the jewelry case and tell them to keep the newspaper away from it."

"Did something happen?"

"Sprohic will try to get out of town anytime soon..."

I couldn't sleep well that night. When it was half past five in the morning, I woke up with a call from Crane. She informed me that two cars had been stolen.

I dressed up and ran to the head office.