The
Zombie
Chronicles

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Finished works:
   Billions
    ---
   Outbreak
    ---
   Undead
     Advantage
    ---
   Found
    ---
   About a Woman
    ---
   Short Stories

Works in Progress:
   TZC2: Discovery

Works on hold:
   Zombie Nation
    ---
   Zombieboy

Found

Chapter 10

The two days fairly flew by for Kaylee, she had to bus down to the hospital for therapy once and then received a government letter through the mail telling her to report to the court house for her new ration card and id. Which ate up most of the morning the day she expected Brian to come by. Around noon he called to say he was not going to arrive until two pm, if that was okay and Kaylee agreed it was. In fact it was better than okay, because it allowed for her to take a short nap before he arrived. Kaylee had coffee ready and a casserole heating when Brian arrived.

The sky was clear and the sun was shining bright, despite this the temperatures were down near twenty five degrees. Brian was once again bundled up against the weather when he came in. Kaylee moved easier than the last time he had seen her, though she still looked tired and underweight. In her eyes Brian looked overworked and run down, both of them had smiles for the other. Kaylee noticed Brian was not wearing his wedding ring.

They sat down to the coffee and Kaylee pointed to his hand and said, “Is that my fault?”

He smiled ruefully, “A little, maybe, it was something that has been building for awhile, you were maybe the last straw?”

“So it was my fault!”, she accused.

“No, not really there were a lot of other straws, yours weighed very little.”, his face turned serious, “A lot of the guys in the office were pushing me to move on too, including the counselor. There was a lot of peer pressure, yours just provoked me to think about things again and re-evaluate them. My wife is dead, after such a long time, with phones and email working again, if she were alive I would have found her or she would have found me. I can only hope she went quickly and is not one of the ones who came back. It has been 19 months, more than the traditional year of mourning. It really was past time to move on.”

“You have any prospects then?”, she teased.

“About two hundred and fifty thousand, sure.”, he shot back, “More if I include women between eighteen and twenty four and women over thirty six, in my target age group, there are about two hundred fifty thousand women in the area to choose from.”

Kaylee was a bit taken back to get such a serious sounding answer. His next words confirmed he was teasing her.

“I am going to start interviewing prospects next week, I mean today is Friday, no sense in starting on the weekend, right? I set up a website to handle the volume, I can get you the web address if you want to get your application in early.”

Mouth opened in an 'O', Kaylee blushed and then squealed in indignation. “YOU! Oh! Like I would be interested!”

Brian's face finally broke into a grin, “What not interested in a cop? The divorce rates are pretty high...”

“No!”, she retorted, wanting to say, 'Yes I would', but instead muttering under her breath about men in general and those in her apartment in particular.

He laughed and abruptly turned the conversation to more serious things, “I was late today because I expected the DNA to come back this afternoon and was hoping I could run a search before I got here. No DNA, the lab was empty when I went down there, so they must have called it a day and headed home for the weekend.”

“This...what we were talking about, that isn't the last of it! You can't switch to business like turning off a light!”

“No, no I hope it isn't the last of it, I did switch didn't I? Good job out of me! High five?”, he asked tentatively raising one hand in the air.

“No. Okay so Monday you get the results and search and Monday afternoon you arrest the guy or know that you have to broaden your search?”

Brian high fived himself with his free hand, “Officially changed now, I guess. That is about what I expect yes, maybe not an arrest, but more information yes, and a new direction to go regardless.”

“Okay, this is good, better than I expected. Will I have to identify the guy if you get him?”

“In a line up? Yes, that would be good if you could, but you might not be able to, you said you didn't get a good look at him. We'll deal with that when we come to it. Either way he won't see you.”

“I would try, just to see if anything clicked, maybe I would get lucky and recognize something. I won't be much use at a trial if I don't recognize something. Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? You off?”

Warily he answered, “I could be...I am not much good with heavy lifting and lack motivation to clean and do chores.”

“No nothing like that. I have therapy in the morning at the hospital and was thinking of going down to see where Stacey is buried after that.”

“Oh sure I could do that, you seeing the nurse practitioners? I still have therapy once a week for my knee. I could see if I could do it tomorrow instead of Monday and just meet you at the hospital. I went to Stacey's funeral, I know where she is interned, she is not buried. I mean her ashes aren't, they were sealed in a mausoleum. It is not heated, very cold, so we'll have to dress warm.”

“Okay that would be good, I checked the internet for bus times and one runs to Indianola and back four times a day from the new downtown station. If we leave at one, we can come back on the four o'clock bus. Oh, hey, look at this I have my new ration card, one of the new ones too.”

Kaylee held up a red-backed plastic laminated card with her picture on it. “Not my best face, I know, it seems like I am always cold and tired looking these days, they said I could get a new picture in a couple of months.”

Brian took the card and flipped it over and back reading the data, “Yeah nice, I have not even seen many of these yet, this one has the rfid tag on it, with your id number, I have a portable reader that will let me read this and get everything in the system about you. Very nice. Ooh F-2 huh? Moving up from the 'K' world. Did you get a ration list yet?”

She shook her head, “Not yet, I will just go and pick the stuff up and be surprised, the card doubles as a debit card to my ration account too. Pretty nice. I didn't think we, like humanity, could make something new like this again, the new technology makes me feel, optimistic I guess.”

“Yeah me too, me too.”

Brian called the hospital to reschedule his appointment time to Saturday, after an early dinner they watched the local five o'clock news and Brian left for home around six thirty. As he was leaving Kaylee held him in a hug that lasted a little longer than it should have, looking at him she wished, almost, that he would lean over and kiss her, the thought brought warmth to places that had been cold for a long time, then the embrace ended and a couple of 'good nights'.

The next morning Kaylee went through therapy at the hospital without seeing Brian, but when she was leaving he was waiting in the lobby. “I was on the first floor, they do most of the leg and foot therapy down there. I figured they would have you up here in the nuero section for your head and back. How did things go?”

“Good, my head still hurts if I move it around too fast, but my ribs are hardly sore at all, just a little tender where they broke. Sometimes though, it feels like there are ants crawling all over them and I just want to itch, itch, itch and, of course, I can't. They tell me that is normal and it will go away once they finish healing. Oh and they tell me to eat, eat, eat. I am still only tipping the scale at 102. About 12 pounds lighter than I was at Christmas.”

“Eat, eat, eat, huh? Sounds good I am hungry right now. Shall we eat here before we head out?”

They got a couple of sandwiches at the hospital cafeteria, which ended up being free because the staff recognized Brian as a police officer and told him his money was not any good there. Then they caught a cross town bus to the south bus station, which was new and set up to handle buses from nearby outlying towns, the old bus station still handled most of the buses from further than fifty miles away.

The bus they boarded was a converted school bus, school children now walked to school, or took public transportation back and forth. The most popular method in the summer was to join a “Walking School Bus” usually led by older students or a parent, the kids got more exercise and freed the school buses up for the massive demand of public transportation. Best of all the diesel buses could run off of bio-diesel with little performance problems. Schools had differing hours now too, with fall, spring and summer sessions. Kids were out of school from the third week of November until March first. There was a shorter break in the summer months, from the fourth week of July until after Labor day. Schools in the remaining states had also been taken over by a common authority, in a sense it was federalized.

The school bus they boarded did have a heater going at full blast, however it was insufficient for the needs of warming the interior space. By the time they disembarked in Indianola they were chilled, luckily there was a 'short bus' waiting to take passengers where they needed to go in Indianola, for the price of their normal tickets they were dropped off last at the mausoleum. The bus driver asked how long they would be, when they said a half hour or so, he said he would take his break here, to wait for them.

“I brought a guy out here a week or so ago, during that storm we had and he had to walk back, it'd be a wonder if he didn't get pneumonia. I know it isn't storming, but I noticed you two don't seem to be in the best of health either, if you don't mind my saying so. I won't leave you here. Just tap on the door if I am dozing off when you get back.”

The mausoleum was open and Brian led the way to where Stacey was interned. When they arrived there where bundles of flowers on the floor beneath her marker and a not was taped to the face stone next to her name “Stacey Allison Olson”, the second line read “March 12th, 1985 – January 1st 2010” and the third line was “God gives us love. Something to love He lends us.”

Stacey had expected to be overcome with emotion, to cry, to break down and sob in Brian's embrace. Instead she just felt empty. There was a lingering sadness, she brought her hand to the face stone and ran her fingers along the carved out words, which were about chest high. The tactile sense of the smooth granite, and the sharp carved letters were comforting somehow that she could not explain. Her fingers brushed the note, which was taped with the words facing the stone. She gave Brian a questioning look, as if to ask, “Do I read it?”

He spoke, “I am not sure.”, he gestured to other face stones with notes attached to them, “Other people taped theirs face out. It is hung in a public spot, I can't see the harm in reading it.”

Kaylee twisted the note around, while Brian read some of the other names and epitaphs on the other face stones. After reading it she called out, “Brian! You better read this!”

He took two limping strides over to her and looked over her shoulder, not touching the note, he quickly read it and then said, “Don't touch anything.” in a sharp voice, “Step away from the wall, straight back. I have to call in and get someone down here.”

The note fluttered back to face the wall as Kaylee let it go, it was a short note and the scrawled text was barely legible, as if scrawled by a seven year old, it said simply: “Stacey, I am sorry it was you. I never thought things would come to this. Please forgive me.” The note was unsigned.

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