Liv had finally dropped off late in the night, after tossing and turning as restlessly as Major had ever seen her. He lay awake long after she fell asleep, staring up at the ceiling. So many things had happened tonight, but of them all, the one he couldn't get out of his mind was the absence of Natalie. She hadn't been one of the Romero zombies, Major was sure of it. So where had she been taken, and by whom? He had to get to the bottom of this. He had to find her. At last he determined that the best thing he could do, in the absence of anyone from Max Rager left alive to ask, was to call the remaining Chaos Killer victims and ask them what they knew. He didn't look forward to the task at all, but it had to be done, or he'd have no peace.
In the morning, he and Ravi drove back to their place and he tried to explain the plan.
"Major … are you sure you want to do that?"
"I am. I mean, it's gonna be awkward. I'm gonna have to talk to all the people I kidnapped and drill down on whether they saw anything that might get me to Natalie."
Ravi was looking past him. "Ah, Major," he whispered, and Major turned to follow his gaze.
It was bad. Their house was trashed, with graffiti spray-painted on it and garbage strewn across the lawn.
"Our heroes return," Major muttered to himself as he and Ravi crossed the street.
They stared at the mess, including a hole in the glass of the front door where a rock had been thrown through it. "It's gonna get better now," Ravi offered. "Now that you've been cleared."
"You think?" Major wished he had his friend's optimism. Then again, from Ravi's silence, it appeared he wished he had it, too.
Fortunately the inside of the place hadn't been touched, so other than a stale smell and some milk that needed to be thrown out, they were back up and running, showered and changed, before long. Ravi headed off to work, and Major waited for Liv to pick him up, starting to work his way through the list.
He was still at it as he and Liv stood on the Fillmore Graves campus waiting for Clive. At the tone, he launched into the message he had memorized by now. "Hi, this is Major Lilywhite. I was at Max Rager the other night, and I was hoping to talk to you about that girl Natalie. If you remember anything, call me back at this number. Thanks."
Clive appeared just as Major was hanging up. A group of soldiers ran by, shouting out a cadence that was all about not being able to be killed. Clive watched them go. "You think those were all zombies?"
"We said 0900," Liv informed him crisply.
He looked at his watch. "It's nine right now."
"If you're early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late." It seemed simple to Major, but then, he was still on Janko brain, as was Liv.
"Just so I understand, if we can find you two some new non-soldier brains, you won't be like this?"
"Depends on the brains."
"If we ate the brains of a train conductor, for example, similar issue," Major said.
Clive decided not to take this conversation any further. "We should head in. Maybe we'll run into a normal person we could murder."
Vivian Stoll made a good show of being glad to see them when they were shown into her office, ushering them to seats. "Have you been watching the news? So far, so good. The Chaos Killer victims are coming through like champs."
"I downloaded Major and Clive on what you told me," Liv said, jumping right into the middle of things. "About Seattle being a zombie homeland."
Stoll hadn't expected that, and wasn't thrilled, although she kept her face mostly blank. "Huh."
"I'm guessing I'm the only non-zombie in the loop," Clive said.
"Oh, no. Far from it. We probably have a couple dozen human employees who are fully briefed." She leaned toward Clive with a tight smile. "But those are humans I know and trust."
"Clive has already witnessed a full-scale zombie outbreak," Liv pointed out. "That's a genie that can't really be put back in the bottle. We want to know what you mean when you talk about Seattle being a zombie homeland. How can we know if we're with you when we don't even really know what we're talking about?"
"Fair enough," Stoll conceded. "We here at Fillmore Graves are preparing for D-Day. Discovery Day," she clarified when Clive looked uncertain about the term. "The day when humans en masse learn of our existence. What do you think happens then, Liv?"
"I thought it would be in our best interests if it didn't get out."
"Maybe it won't … but it probably will. So what happens when it does? What happens when humans learn that there's a few hundred brain-eating, highly contagious zombies in their midst? You think they'll ask us to raise our hands and then they're gonna do their best to help us survive and assimilate? You think they'll help us get the brains we need to survive?"
"Where do you get your brains?" Clive asked, cutting into what sounded like a rehearsed speech.
Stoll leaned further toward Liv, cutting her eyes to Clive and then back to Liv. "See what I'm talking about? It's a touchy subject." To Clive, she added, "There are several crematorium owners here in the Pacific Northwest who are paying cash for houses in upscale neighborhoods for doing nothing more than debraining the deceased and sending those brains our way. But … nobody's answered my question. What happens on D-Day?" She looked around at the three of them like they were students in a senior seminar taking a final exam.
"They exterminate us," Major said softly.
"Ooh, check out the big brain on Major. We here at Fillmore Graves do not plan on going gently into that good night."
"What do you plan on doing?" Liv asked.
"Well, for a start, we're well-armed and well-trained. We're also the proud owners of the formula for Super Max. No one else gets it. Max Rager is no longer, and with Super Max we are faster, stronger, and have more endurance than the humans who would annihilate us."
Major found that an interesting strategy. He wondered if they knew about the side effects of anger and loss of control. He wondered if they cared.
"Can we get a straight answer on what you mean when you say Seattle's going to be the capital of the zombie homeland?" Clive asked. "Are you declaring war?"
"You want a straight answer? Come see." Stoll led them across her office, where she called up a file on a wall-mounted screen: a field of blue with a pink dot in the middle. Some kind of topographical map, Major thought. "See this dot?" Stoll asked. "It's an island. And we own it. Zombie Island." She surveyed their blank faces with a smile. "Sounds like the name of a summer blockbuster, doesn't it?"
"You're moving all zombies to their own island?"
"Our own island, Liv. Show some team spirit!" She showed them a few pictures of construction workers on a project. "We're building the infrastructure now. We're at least a year and a half away, but it can hold all of us. We can self-segregate. This here—" She switched to a picture of a framework going up. "That's gonna be the schoolhouse."
"Schoolhouse?" Major wasn't sure he had heard that right.
"There are zombie children?" Clive asked.
"Why should that be a surprise?"
Major supposed it wasn't, once he thought of it. If you were a zombie and you had kids, how easy would it be to scratch them? While rough-housing or playing sports, or just in the course of daily life? They should have thought of it. But they were so used to looking on zombieism as being contained, just them, something small. They should have expected it to get bigger.
Looking at their shocked faces, Stoll suggested they take a walk. She took them to another part of the facility where the children's classrooms were. Major had so many questions about how that worked, but he didn't feel comfortable asking them. Mostly he tagged along at the end and kept his thoughts to himself. After all this time, all the hunting for brains and the managing on their own, there was a seductive comfort about this whole massive company whose entire resources were devoted to making life as a zombie livable and safe.
On the way, Stoll explained that her husband had been scratched and then extorted for brains—Blaine's work, no doubt—and that she had chosen to be infected rather than live without him. Her husband had found a way to get his own brains and stopped paying the bribe, and had disappeared a week later. Again, likely Blaine. Damn the man, Major thought. And Peyton had slept with that guy? He still couldn't quite wrap his head around it.
Stoll went on to explain that a number of the soldiers had been the victims of a biological attack, and had spread that sickness during a Fourth of July retreat, leaving no choice but to scratch them, since she couldn't bear to watch them die.
A line of children was filing into a classroom as they arrived. Many of them smiled and waved at Stoll, calling her "Miss Vivian". But one stopped short, his face lighting up, and called out Clive's name. He and Clive embraced like long-lost brothers. It was a side of Clive that Major had never seen before, and he had to admit he liked it. Before the kid when back to class, he looked at Liv with pity. "You should tan and dye."
Clive told them that the kid's family had lived in his building for a while. He was clearly shaken by the encounter.
As Clive looked through the window at the children, Stoll said, "That biological weapon that the general dropped on his own people?"
"Yeah?"
"The people who were infected developed lesions on their faces. All over their bodies. They were incredibly contagious. And the people who weren't infected became so terrified of those who were, they started shooting the infected on sight. That's what's gonna happen when the people of Seattle realize there are zombies living among them." She paused to let the impact of her words sink in, then addressed Liv. "You really should tan and dye. We're trying to keep a secret here."
Outside, the three of them stood together trying to make sense of what they had learned.
"Super Max powered zombies armed to the gills, ready to do battle once they're discovered? And I'm not supposed to say anything?" Clive was clearly struggling with this concept. When Liv and Major didn't respond, he continued, "Aren't we the 'no secrets' club?"
"We're the 'no secrets between us' club," Liv clarified.
"I think what they're doing here is smart," Major said. "I mean, do we really believe there's going to be a 'let's talk things out with the zombies' phase once the human population learns we exist?" Major's first reaction on discovering zombies existed was to take out the staff of Meat Cute … how could he deny that others were going to have the same response?
"I do," Liv offered.
"Once they hear that we eat brains … Pew." He mimed shooting himself in the head.
Liv and Clive didn't like that idea, but they couldn't argue with it, either. People were people … and they didn't like what they didn't understand. Or, worse, what they thought they understood all too well.