The Dishonored Dead by Robert Swartwood Page B

and what they did, and so they waited the half hour or so until a van pulled up. Two men got out, one carrying a shovel, the other a black container. They instantly got to work, the man with the shovel digging, the man with the black container recording the date and time and location of the Pandora. Once the man with the shovel had dug down to about three feet (that seemed to be the standard depth for these Pandoras), the shovel clinked against something solid. Then, all at once, the men started to move at a slower and more measured pace, the digger handing over the shovel to the recorder, the recorder taking the shovel and opening the plastic container. The digger worked very carefully, freeing the Pandora from the earth, and then handed the quartz-encrusted cube up to the recorder. The recorder took the Pandora, placed it in the foam padding of the plastic container, closed it, locked it, and then that was that. After filling in the hole, they got back into their van and drove away, waiting for the next location to be called in.
    So far tonight they’d found two Pandoras. The average, Conrad was told, was three Pandoras a night. He was beginning to understand a lot more about these pockets of energy. Such as how there was no way to predict how many Pandoras were in any given area. In a mile radius there might be no Pandoras; in another mile radius there might be a dozen. But Garry had confided in Conrad a theory about this. He speculated that while there might be no Pandoras in one area one month, there might be some in the same very area the next.
    “It’s like these things are growing,” he said. “Like the energy—the life —is coming right out of the ground.”
    Before there had been ten teams of Trackers moving about Olympus and the surrounding suburbs—three teams went out to the country on the weekends—but now with the added men the teams had been taken back down to five. This meant instead of working with the same zombie almost nightly, they traded off back and forth.
    The other zombie they worked with was Ruth. She was twenty-nine years old and very quiet. She always had her long hair pulled back into a ponytail, though the nights they took her outside to track she was made to hide that hair up into her hat. They all wore hats—no masks—and a form of night-vision glasses. The glasses made the night a somewhat bright and hazy gray. But at least it got them around without the use of flashlights, which would be conspicuous and something they wished to avoid.
    It had rained earlier that day and the ground was still damp and muddy in places. The trees were wet and the leaves dripped.
    “I think he’s got one.”
    This was from Scott, whose voice came through the earpieces they all wore. They were hooked up to microphones too and could communicate with each other and call in to the Diggers or, if need be, Living Intelligence.
    The four of them were spread out about fifty yards from James. Scott and Brooks flanked him from the front, Garry and Conrad from the back. It was important—or so Conrad had been told—that the zombies were given enough space.
    They had passed through a grove of trees, had passed a pond with a number of sleeping dead ducks nestled by the water, had passed a gazebo, and were now coming out toward the playground section of the park. Up ahead, by the swings and slides, James had stopped completely. He just stood there, his head tilted. Conrad should have known what this meant the first time he’d seen it, but still he had asked, and was told the zombie was listening for “it.” When he had asked what “it” was, Scott gave him a blank look and said, “The beating.”
    Now the zombie took a few steps forward, toward the swing set, his head still tilted. Suddenly he turned, started walking toward the slides. He came to the one slide, touched the ladder, and Conrad, thinking of all those children who played there, had to remind himself that everything was okay and that the zombie