Pariah

32

“It would be a total betrayal,” Ellen said, rubbing her abdomen, phantom kicks pummeling her innards. “We shouldn’t, and you had no right to do what you did. My God, if she discovered what you did it could mean the end of everything we’ve got.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Eddie sulked.

“Or the beginning of a brave new era,” Karl added. “Really. If she isn’t sharing knowledge of how to walk among the unclean then she’s done nothing to engender our loyalty.”

“Unclean? Engender?” Alan echoed.

“What? I’m not entitled to be articulate?”

“Um, of course you are, it just sounds a little unnatural, you know? You never spoke in such a grandiloquent manner before.”

“Oh, and so what’s ‘grandiloquent,’ then?” Karl bristled.

“It’s mockery.” Alan pushed back his chair and crossed his legs with a smirk.

“Shut up, both of you,” Ellen snapped. “This is serious. Eddie’s proposed betraying Mona’s trust, and moreover turned it into a conspiracy of us against her, which, frankly, is pretty fucked.”

“Hey, I didn’t put it like that,” Eddie said.

“No, but that’s the gist. And listen, I wasn’t going to share this little tidbit with the rest of you, but I’m pregnant and I’m not about to risk poisoning my baby in some experiment with mystery drugs.” Ellen looked at her watch to confirm how long Mona had been away on an errand. She felt tired and irritable, some of which was hormonal, but mostly it was disgust. The others offered no comment on her gravidity. Whether that was in deference or indifference was anyone’s guess, though Dabney did look away.

“Well, I’m in,” Karl said. “I need to know whether she’s divinely imbued or just a druggie with a heckuva side effect.”

“I guess I’m in, too,” Dave said, winning a clap on the back from Eddie.

“Include me out,” Abe said, softly. “That little girl has been good to us and I don’t plan on returning the favor with treachery.”

“Yeah, me neither,” said Alan.

“Same here,” said Dabney. “ ’Less we keep it honest and talk to her about it, I don’t want no part of it.”

Outside heavy rain pelted the windows, but no one was rushing upstairs to frolic and strip. The sky was an oppressive, ever-darkening gray and the climate inside wasn’t conducive to abrupt shifts in mood. Even though this meeting was taking place in Ellen’s dining area, four floors above pavement, a bunker mentality prevailed. Ellen wondered if this was how Hitler’s staff felt as it plotted his demise. Was that an apt comparison? She hoped not. How about Kennedy’s people plotting his? Ellen believed the conspiracy theories. Not all of them, but some.

She got up from the table and stretched, then stepped over to the front windows. Below, the horde shambled, aimless, ugly as ever, pockets of unrest visible from this elevation. Some pushed and shoved, others stumbled, fell from view, trampled underfoot. It always looked like the least festive New Year’s Eve gathering ever down there; Times Square, apocalypse-style.

Behind her the others continued to dicker about whether or not to raid Mona’s pharmaceutical stash. Abe had no interest. Since Ruth’s death Mona had gotten him hooked on Valium and now he almost matched his supplier in imperturbability. He was like the pod-people version of his former self. It didn’t seem possible that a chemical cocktail was what kept Mona safe out there, though pounding drugs certainly went a long way toward explaining her personality, or lack of one.

“Pregnant, huh?” Dabney sidled up to Ellen and took a spot beside her at the window, rain spatter stippling them both with dark spots. Lightning flashed, followed by booming thunder. Ellen just nodded. Karl looked over at the windows and considered the constant thunder and lightning emanating from God’s throne in Revelation.

“Is this a joyous kind of thing or an unexpected problem?” Dabney continued. “I don’t mean to pry, but it’s a big development.”

“Yeah, I know.”

As he looked over at Alan, Dabney suppressed his urge to ask who was the father. Mike hadn’t been dead that long. Maybe she didn’t know. If so, they’d never know, not even when-or if-the baby was born. Mike and Alan fit the same basic description, brunette, pale but with a slightly olive complexion. Did it even matter? Not like junior would be headed for college someday. Or even kindergarten.

Ellen smelled alcohol on Dabney’s breath. It wasn’t beer breath, either. It was distillery-strong, whiskey breath, complemented by cigarettes. His eyes were red-rimmed and hooded. It seemed to Ellen that almost everyone was in a mad rush to be medicated. Or anesthetized. Dabney gave her bicep a soft, paternal squeeze and left the apartment. From the table, Eddie pounded his fist like a gavel and declared the meeting adjourned. He and his confederates would break into Mona’s apartment and steal drugs from the kitty. Ellen took a deep breath, the air wet and redolent of death and ozone. Sheet lightning whitewashed the sky, leeching the remaining pigment from an already colorless vista. If the world weren’t already over, she’d find this a whole lot more portentous.

Psychosomatic or not, her insides churned, and she wondered if taking this baby to term was a good idea. The zombies weren’t going anywhere. It had been over five months since they’d supplanted mankind. For all Ellen knew, the occupants of 1620 were the only people left, at least in New York. What hope did her baby have? Alan was probably right.

To hell with him and his rationality.

To hell with Mona and her lack of charm.

To hell with ’em all.

As the last of her “guests” left, she slumped against the wall, wanting nothing more than to cry, but no tears came. She just sat there, hunched over and desolate. A baby. New life for a dead planet. Was that hopeful and wise, or just selfish and stupid? Perhaps later, in keeping with the narcotics theme of the day, she’d ask Mona to venture out and fill a prescription of her own: Mifepristone, aka RU 486, aka “the abortion pill.”

An ounce of prevention, retroactive-style. Better safe than sorry.

Abe lay on the bed on the spot in which Ruth had succumbed. Alan and Karl had flipped the mattress for Abe, since her seepage had done a number on the other side, even with the mattress pad in place. The air in the bedroom was stale but Abe didn’t mind. He was comfortably numb. Where had he heard that phrase before? Maybe he just made it up. The room was dark and Abe stared at the ceiling. After a short while he wasn’t sure if his eyes were even open, so he blinked a few times to clear that up. Open, closed. It made no difference. The Valium made Abe aggressively apathetic, which he supposed was oxymoronic, but who cared?

For a man as formerly opinionated as he, indifference was unnatural, and drug induced or not, becalmed or not, he felt the unnaturalness deep in his id. It wasn’t Abraham Fogelhut’s role in the universe to be its calm center. It conflicted with his essential Abeness. Was this what the hippies and yippies experienced, he wondered? When they were all dosing themselves to the gills back in the sixties, when all that nonstop navel gazing was happening, when everything was a happening, when happening became a noun, was this that? If so, Abe, in soft focus, needed to revise his opinion of the sixties drug subculture; it was even dumber and more self-centered than he’d suspected.

Happening as a noun.

Party as a verb.

Vacation as a verb.

Summer as a verb.

Summer as a verb?

Jesus H. Christ.

Between the hippies and the yuppies, English was in its death throes. And forget the coloreds and their hip-hop lingo. Ebonics, was it? If the plague hadn’t come along when it did, given the trajectory on which English was headed-at least as spoken by Americans-pretty soon the younger generation would be reduced to tribal clicking languages. Maybe the zombies did everyone a favor.

This wasn’t relaxing.

It was too soon to have developed a tolerance for the drug, wasn’t it?

When was the last time he took a pill?

Take a pill, take a pill, take a pill. Ugh, that was what weaklings did. Take a pill. The world is shit. Take a pill. Your wife is dead. Take a pill. The kids are dead. Take a pill. Take two pills. Take a whole bottle of pills and be done with it. Fuggit. Forget it. Man was made to suffer. Didn’t some poet say that? Somebody said it. Maybe it was a song. Okay, I’m making a compact with myself, he thought. In the remaining weeks I read. I read everything Mona can get her hands on. The classics. I read some, but not enough. And always it was for school. I need to make a list. Let the others do what they will, chase their tails, fritter it away, but I’m going out enriched in the brains department.

Abe got off the bed, grabbed a bar of Ivory soap and walked up to the roof, shedding garb as he made the ascent. Modesty? Antiquated notion. The downpour drummed against the pebbled-glass skylight, smearing the soot, its rhythm beckoning Abe forward. Let the others cower in their hidey-holes. Or whatever they were up to. From the sounds of it as he passed the Italian ape’s digs, some vigorous buggery. To each his own. Abe dropped the last of his attire as he stepped onto the tar paper, which shimmered with wetness, reflecting each stroke of lightning. His body, even well fed, was lank and achromatic. Had his balls always hung this low? Who could remember? The sky looked like a backdrop from an expressionist German film of the silent era-thick, black clouds set asymmetrically against deposits of leaden gray. With the recurrent lightning the buildings all became, at least in flashes, monoliths of pure black and white.

Absolute.

As a youngster Abe had been instructed in absolutes. There was good and evil, period. Good folks and bad. As an adolescent he saw little to contradict that. The Nazis were unadulterated evil, easy to fight, easy to hate. Their atrocities left no room for debate. He’d joined up and fought for good, and even though the horrors were manifold, the cause was inarguably virtuous-and this was before he was aware of the death camps. He’d seen brutality in all its gory glory. But glimmerings of gray began to afflict his psyche. His first German corpse conflicted with the propaganda. This wasn’t some massive Hun with sharpened teeth-though even as a naïve teen, Abe hadn’t really expected the enemy to look that way. But this was just a kid. Skinny, blond, lightly freckled, soft pink lips, and fading color in the cheeks. This wasn’t a Nazi; this was just a foot soldier. Just a dead kid in a muddy ditch.

The world was easier to absorb before that moment. Abe had liked black and white, and he’d missed it when it was taken from him. Down below, the multitude groaned in protest of the weather, their plaint drowned out by the pervasive, ground-shaking thunder. There were no towheaded blond kids with freckles and soft lips down there. Maybe once upon a time, but not now.

They were the enemy.

Us versus them.

Black and white.

But even those things lacked malice. They were just automated instinct.

As Abe lathered up, he missed gray.

At least Ivory was pure.

Mostly.

“Pretty in pink,” Karl burbled. His skin felt funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny. Funny-ish. “I don’t even like The Psychedelic Furs.” He looked at the pill in his palm, filched from Mona’s stash. Pink. Though the Bible didn’t address drug use, there were very clear principles outlined in it that suggested drug use wasn’t acceptable. Christians were supposed to respect the laws of the land. But the land had no laws any more. This wasn’t recreational usage, anyway. This was a life-or-death experiment. That made Karl smile. He’d always found the term “experimenting with drugs” disingenuous, but that’s what this was. He felt very scientific.

And itchy.

And sweaty.

And cotton mouthed.

33

“She only has four toes.”

“What?”

“She only has four toes.”

“I heard you the first time. What are you talking about?” Ellen pushed back from the dining table and stared at Alan, who sat there stirring powdered nondairy creamer into room-temperature coffee, his spoon tinkling gratingly with each rotation. Finally, patience exhausted, Ellen snatched the utensil from her in-the-doghouse paramour’s hand and tossed it across the room, where it clattered into the sink. Ellen smiled with petty satisfaction and thought, She shoots, she scores. Swish.

“Mona. She only has four toes on each foot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She was posing for me again today, so I could finish up the canvas I’d started-and don’t give me that look. Seriously. There’s no extracurricular activity and you’re not going to guilt me over an involuntary reaction. I got a boner. Sue me. Move on.” Ellen scowled but let her forehead relax, the creases ebbing. Alan continued. “I’d painted her with four toes on her feet and was looking to correct that. Not that I need a model for toes, but you know, it was curious is all. So she’s sitting there, in the same position…” Again Ellen scowled, the word “position” ever linked with carnality. Alan paused, let it pass, resumed his narrative. “And this time I scrutinized her tootsies…”

“Tootsies. How adorable.”

“Please? Could you please? Seriously? It’s enough, already. The point is I hadn’t goofed. She has only four toes on each foot.” Alan restrained himself from saying, “each beautifully turned foot,” or “each devastatingly sexy foot.” He pinched a testicle to suppress the erection he felt inevitable. Just the thought of those smooth, cartoony peds wreaked havoc on his libido. He’d once seen a porn video where a guy pulled out and came on the woman’s foot. At the time he’d thought it was the stupidest thing he could ever imagine. Things change.

“So what am I supposed to make of this little revelation?” Ellen said, unmoved by Alan’s news.

“Look, forget I said anything, okay? This is what couples do, right? They sit at the table and make small talk. Only I didn’t think this was so small. I thought it was genuinely interesting. It was just another thing to factor into Mona’s roster of oddness. Just forget it.”

“Consider it forgotten.”

Alan excused himself from the table and left the apartment. Better he should spend time alone. Was this some hormonal thing? Some pregnancy thing? The roller coaster ride had been fun-was “fun” even the right word? Fun? Interesting. The sex had been good. Stellar. Desperate, but explosive. But this? Did Mike deal with this or was this all some cumulative build up of hormones, grief, and immeasurable weltschmerz the likes of which the philosophers of yore never in their wildest imaginings grappled with? When he thought of it that way, Alan figured Ellen was entitled to some appreciable bitchiness. But it still was a compound drag.

He shuffled downstairs to his flat and swung open the unlocked door, taking in his miasma of death-world renderings, the gooey center of which were the portraits of his four-toed fantasy babe. Did he even want to fuck her? To be honest, yes, he surely did. The world was over, in spite of Ellen’s micro-attempt to repopulate it. New life just meant livestock for the ghouls outside, fresh meat for the grinder. What good were morals now? Maybe a sociopath like Tommasi had the right idea. Maybe so, but you had to be hardwired for that kind of thing. Nature versus nurture. Alan was a nice boy, period. A nice boy with a dirty mind, but really, was there any other kind? A nice boy with a clean mind was illusory.

He stepped into the kitchen and opened a package of Cheez-Its, scooping a handful into his mouth. Gone was the rationing mentality. He ate on automatic, not even tasting what he shoveled in. As a thick glob of orangey half-chewed mush wedged in his windpipe, hard edges scraping soft tissue, and he began to choke, the realization that eating had resumed its status as commonplace tickled his brain. Eating wasn’t no thang. He grabbed a bottle of Evian off the counter and took a few swigs, lubricating the doughy wad, swallowing hard, forcing it down. Not so long ago he’d have been nursing each cracker, savoring each bite, picking the crumbs off his shirt and putting them in his mouth, making it last. Now he was back to indifferent fistfuls. Alan walked over to the front windows and admired the crowd on York. The ol’ gang.

“Hey, folks!” he shouted, waving as if to oldest, bestest buddies. “Hey! How’s it going down there? Same old, same old, huh? Yeah, I know. But look at this!” He palmed another batch of Cheez-Its, Evian at the ready, and rammed them into his mouth. He chewed open mouthed like an ill-mannered child, flecks of fluorescent snack food spattering the sill and windowpane. He spat a gob of the near-glowing processed food onto the bald crown of one of the meatheads below, creating a pulpy yarmulke. No reaction from the target; a reliable disappointment. It was always the same faces down there; having immortalized them in paint, pastel, crayon, charcoal, graphite, and ink, he knew their pusses intimately. It amazed Alan that these brain-dead bastards could be capable of locomotion, yet never go anywhere. They milled around, never straying from their immediate surroundings, like penned animals. It reminded him of families he’d observed in the outer boroughs who never ventured into Manhattan, these urban provincial hicks whose entire lives played out in a square-mile radius. The things below were no different. At least veal had an excuse.

Not that it mattered any more. If anything, the majority of outer-borough zombies were probably indistinguishable from their former selves. Jesus, even in the apocalypse I’m a snob. Alan wiped his mouth and watched the same old, wishing he could change the channel. Absently, Alan snatched a newsprint pad off the floor and began to sketch the crowd.

Just to pass the time.

“Four toes. Four fucking toes.”

“This is more like it.”

Three roofs north of Dabney’s, Eddie grinned, testing the tensile strength of the jury-rigged swivel that anchored the butt of his fishing rod. He pushed his feet hard against the wooden footrests he’d nailed straight through the tar paper. Dabney didn’t want that craziness happening on his turf.

“Yeah, just like those fishing shows on cable. This is gonna fuckin’ rule!” Eddie let out a rebel yell and chugged his beer. He’d gotten to like warm beer. Dave sat nearby on a folding lawn chair, not sharing his buddy’s enthusiasm.

Eddie planted his ass in his makeshift fighting chair and prepared for a rousing round of “flynchin’.” The rod felt good in his hands. Sturdy. He cast the line-the noose weighted with a brass plumb bob-and jiggled the pole to test the swivel’s motility. Smooth. Beer in one hand, rod in the other, Eddie could almost imagine being on the high seas, maybe off the coast of Cozumel.

“I’m gonna ask Mona to get me one a them New Age tapes of ocean noise. Play that while I’m up here to help create the mood. That shit would be sweet, bro.”

“Yeah, sweet.”

“You bet your ass, sweet.” A few gulps of Corona, a light buzz, fishing with a buddy. Things had sweetened considerably recently. Whatever those pills were, they didn’t hurt, either. There was a playful, nerve-tickling quality about them, whatever they were. In concert with the beer? Nice. He felt small, electric surges in his thighs and groin. Even if they weren’t Mona’s secret weapon against being eaten alive, they were okay by Eddie. He closed his eyes and began to hum tunelessly, rocking his head side to side to simulate the motion of a boat. “Dude, make seagull noises,” he suggested.

“What?”

“Make some seagull sounds.”

“Dude?”

“Don’t harsh my buzz, bro,” Eddie said, a slight edge creeping into his voice. “Just make some gull noises, okay? Humor me.”

Dave hemmed and hawed for a few, then let out a series of awful high-pitched squawks.

“Perfect,” Eddie said, even though the imitation was far from. “More, but vary the loudness. Make some sound far away.”

Dave had done some questionable things for Eddie, but this was pushing it. Still, he obliged. He felt childish, but that wasn’t so bad. It helped him get into it, and soon he was on his feet, padding around barefoot on the hot tar paper, fluttering his hands and screeching wildly.

Three roofs over, Dabney stood up and watched them, baffled. “The hell are those two fools doing?” He stepped over to the low dividing wall and took a seat, slinging one leg over the side as if mounting on a horse. He had a plastic cupful of Maker’s Mark and took a sip. Cocktail hour at Bar 1620. Dabney had witnessed some daffy shit in his day, but this won the blue ribbon.

As Dave caromed around the rooftop like a drunkard’s cue ball, Eddie’s line dipped violently, then bowed as he yanked it upward into a perfect half circle. “Fuck!” he yelled. Dave was oblivious, lost in his seabird impersonation. Eddie dug his feet hard against the wooden blocks and pushed back into the fighting chair, wishing he had a real one, secured to the deck with straps and all. The thing on the other end of the line was a fighter, or at least heavy. The line jerked and whipped around, but the butt remained fixed to the swivel. Dabney stood up and watched, making no move to help or to flee.

“Fuckin’ bitch!” Eddie growled, loving it.

His shoulders gleamed with perspiration and tanning lotion, each muscle flexed taut, biceps bulging, knuckles nearly glowing white. The rod pitched forward, nearly toppling Eddie, but he righted himself and threw his shoulders back. Though he thought what Eddie was doing was deeply, profoundly, unfathomably stupid, Dabney couldn’t help but admire the moron’s tenacity. With obvious effort, Eddie worked the reel and slowly the line rewound, his catch brought ever closer. “Yo, Dave! Dave! Stop bein’ a fuckin’ bird an’ help me out! Dave!”

Dave snapped out of his playacting and once again threw his arms around Eddie’s waist, Heimlich-style. The two of them fought the rod and over the lip of the roof came two zombies bound together at the throat-a twofer! “Sweet baby Jesus!” Eddie whooped. As the two struggling bodies flopped onto the roof, Dave released Eddie’s waist and ran to grab a brick or two. Eddie gripped the rod with one hand as his catches clawed at the monofilament dug deep into their necks. With his other hand he retrieved from under the chair a ball-peen hammer and stalked closer to his prey. “You don’t look so tough to me.”

Dave hung back, the proximity of the zombies a bit harrowing.

Dabney watched, now swinging both legs to his side of the roof. “White boys want to get themselves killed, that’s their affair,” he whispered, ready for a hasty departure.

Eddie advanced on the strung-up twosome, one male, and one barely recognizable as female, any feminine characteristics eroded by living death. Eddie now used the line like a leash, jerking the rod to make them sit up and notice their captor. Distracted from their predicament, the zombies, upon seeing Eddie, began to hiss and slobber, thick ropes of opaque, grayish drool hanging from their slack jaws. Eddie laughed. “You think if I knocked all her teeth out she’d give me a hummer?” he asked, smirking.

“Dude, I don’t even…” Dave was at a loss.

“Maybe I should bone her till she snaps in two. Maybe I should just bust her up into pieces and see which ones keep twitchin’, then fuck ’em.”

“Dude…” Dave’s lower lip quivered with dismay and disgust.

“I’m just messing with you, Davis. Chill. Like I’d ever in a million years slip it to a skeezer like this. These are desperate times, but not that desperate.”

Dave recalled Eddie’s encounter with the Wandering Jewess and wasn’t so sure. Eddie stepped directly in front of the zombies. The line had cut deep into the male’s throat and thick, nearly black grue seeped out. His flaking, sun-baked skin was puckered around the incision, the edge frayed and ratty. His eyes were gray and hazy, but their direction couldn’t be clearer. Both zombies were intensely interested in Eddie and to a lesser extent Dave, who’d retreated a few feet. Only if his help were essential would he advance. The zombies dropped their claws away from the line around their necks and recoiled from Eddie. “You see this shit? You thought the drugs was barking up the wrong tree? Look at ’em, Dave. They’re backing away. See?”

“Yeah, ’cause they’re scared shitless. Doesn’t mean you’re immune, Eddie.”

“Killjoy,” he sneered, then swung the hammer in a graceful arc and knocked the jaw clear off the female. “Bull’s-eye!” He guffawed as the female’s hands jerked up to her ruined face in astonishment. “There goes your modeling career,” Eddie scoffed, well pleased. “And so much for that blowjob, too. Although…” The zombie’s tongue lolled stupidly in the jawless opening between her upper teeth and gullet.

Dave turned away and heaved.

“Fuckin’ killjoy,” Eddie repeated. He stepped over to the female and smashed out her remaining teeth. “Gummy bitch.” The male began to fight against the noose again. Brain-dead or not, he could sense what was coming and it wasn’t a tasty meal or fresh flowers. Eddie palmed the back of the female’s head and jerked it forward, severing the head altogether, giving the male more room to claw at the line. Eddie stepped back and watched as the male struggled to his feet and spat and growled.

“Gotta love this guy,” Eddie said. “He’s a fighter. A fighter who’s gonna lose, but still.”

The zombie stumbled back as it managed to free itself.

“Can’t have that,” Eddie said, and with a roundhouse kick sent the zombie spiraling off the roof back to its fellows.

“Yoink,” Eddie said, flashing his pearlies.

“Promise me you’re never going to do that again,” Dave said, straightening up from his puking position.

“Why make an empty promise, dude?” Eddie beamed as he popped open another brew. “I just found my new regular sunny-afternoon thing.”

Glancing at his lean-to and considering the vacant apartments below, Dabney contemplated a change of venue, thinking it might be time to move this party indoors.

34

“I want to go out with you,” Karl said, standing on the landing by Mona’s open door.

“On a date?” Mona stared at Karl, her eyes betraying no hint of derision, surprise, or even much in the way of general interest.

“No, no. Not on a date,” he stammered. “I want to leave the building with you next time you go out. On an errand.”

A passable facsimile of curiosity flashed across Mona’s face. “Why?”

“An experiment. I want to see if your zombie repulsion has enough juice to keep them at bay with a companion, if your umbrella of safety extends beyond just you. Remember the childhood game ‘Ghost in the Graveyard’?” Mona shook her head. “Okay, it was like a variation on tag, only there was a graveyard-the playground, your living room, wherever-and a base. The base was a safe zone. So, one kid is chosen to be the ghost. He’s out in the graveyard. Other kids are positioned around the graveyard and have to get back to base. If the ghost tagged you, you were the ghost. But the way we played it was if kids locked arms, or even tied clothing together, you could use ‘electricity’ and leave the base so long as you were tethered to it with a lifeline. The lifeline carried electricity. Not real electricity, you know, just the power of the base. So you could venture into the graveyard safely and taunt the ghost. Sometimes you all were on base and you’d mock the ghost mercilessly until he threatened to quit. Anyway, I want to see if your gift has electricity. You understand?”

“Bad idea.”

“Maybe so, but I need to know.”

“More like you need to die.”

Karl decided he didn’t like when Mona spoke in full sentences. He felt zoomy and his skin prickled. He actually felt electricity, currents flowing through his epidermis. His hairs stood on end. Maybe it was excitement. Maybe it was the drugs. The drugs. What were those drugs? All those years of living a “Just Say No” lifestyle, and now this. Now a lot of things. If Mona was taking speed she sure didn’t show it. Karl knew of a white-trash family near his town that cooked up homemade crystal meth. Hopped-up farm boys would roar out of that house in pickups and blast buckshot into neighbors’ mailboxes and anything else that didn’t move-and sometimes things that did. Big Manfred had pronounced them “doomed.”

“So, what do you say, Mona? Can I come?”

“Bring your Bible.”

“To stop the zombies? Like The Exorcist? ‘The power of Christ compels you,’ ” Karl said, doing a bad impersonation of Max von Sydow.

“In case you need Last Rites.”

Karl definitely didn’t like when Mona spoke. Drugs. The Antichrist. Some folks were right, others weren’t. Mona fell into the latter category. How were they fixed for staples? To the best of Karl’s knowledge, all coffers were brimming. He wanted to put this to the test. Abe had mentioned wanting books. Was that call to leave the nest? Karl felt impatient and Mona’s impassivity exacerbated it. He wasn’t a violent man but he felt the desire to slap her, if only to see what reaction she’d have, if any. Would she get mad? Would she fight back? It was maddening, her demeanor. He wanted to punch her. Not in the face, though. In the stomach. He wanted her to wince and bend over. He wanted to force her to her knees and make her supplicate.

What?

“Mona, would you join me in prayer?” He offered his hands, which now trembled. He was so full of self-revulsion he thought he’d burst. If one could physically purge self-loathing Karl would be the human geyser, spewing from all available orifices. Was it natural madness? The drugs? Who could tell? Cabin fever? “Please?” he implored. Mona shrugged and looked uncomfortable-a recognizable emotion. Not the one he’d been hoping for, but human all the same. “It’s okay,” he sputtered. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to impose my thing on you. It’s okay.”

“Cool,” Mona said as she gripped the doorknob, closing the door.

“Yeah. Prayer is a private matter. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

Mona shut the door and Karl heard her engage the deadbolt. Those things outside didn’t have any effect on her, but he seemed to have. He felt powerful for a moment. I scared Mona. He grinned, then winced, then ran upstairs to his apartment and retrieved a belt from his dresser and began flagellating his back. After several savage strokes he realized he was wearing his shirt, paused to yank off the garment, then resumed. How dare I take pleasure in causing her discomfort? Forgive me, Jesus. Forgive me, God. I don’t even know who I’m asking for forgiveness from, so forgive me for that. Is it Buddha? Allah? Oh, Christ, what if all those terrorists had been right? Karl had read one of Alan’s Phil Dick books, one called VALIS. Was that the real truth? Alan had explained that in the seventies Dick had a vision and became convinced he was in contact with a cosmic consciousness, which he dubbed VALIS, for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.

Of course, Dick was a loopy speed freak, but maybe he was right. Had there ever been any stone-cold rational prophet? Did that trait even go with the territory? Rationality? Was faith rational? Ever? What about all that craziness John wrote? Revelation was still a hard pill to swallow, though Karl tried nightly. Pill. Maybe it was time for a pill. Karl dropped the belt and skittered to his kitchenette to poke one from the blister mat. A small pink caplet dropped into his palm and he washed it down with a bottle of Snapple tea. What am I doing? What am I taking? I need a Physician’s Desk Reference, that’s what I need. Maybe Mona can take me to the Barnes and Noble on Eighty-sixth. But how do I justify me wanting that book? Why would I need it? Unless I was taking unknown drugs. Has she noticed missing pills? Plus, if I went out with her would she take me everywhere she goes? Say her pharmacy jaunts are private? Maybe that’s why she’s reticent.

As a boy, Karl had chicken pox, his pale, pasty body festooned with constellations of red bumps that blistered and itched like mad. He felt that way now, although his skin appeared normal. Many a saint had suffered. Even non-saints. Look at Job. Was it to be his fate to suffer like that? God was always tormenting His faithful flock. Just look at the world. Was this not evidence of a malicious God? God made man in His image, and man was nothing to boast about, really. Flawed, mean, petty, violent, arrogant. This was a creature to be proud of? Maybe that’s why God wiped nearly everyone out. But surely those who remained aren’t the best and brightest. Karl knew he wasn’t. And Eddie? God help us if he’s one of God’s chosen few.

Karl laughed at the thought of Eddie being divinely spared. Karl laughed at the thought of God helping them. What a joke. What a blasphemous joke. The Bible! Drugs! Madness! Karl wanted to go outside so badly he bit his lip and drew blood. He sucked the metallic liquid deeply, savoring it. In his smallest voice he said, “Fuck you, God.”

Then, with renewed vigor, begging clemency, he beat his bare back with the belt until it was slick with blood and sweat. A malicious God was not a God to test. With each stroke of the belt, spatters of blood flecked the beige walls, evoking the chicken-pocked skin of his youth.

“What can I do?” Karl mewled. “What can I do?”

“Well don’t do that,” Ellen sputtered. She stared at Karl in utter disbelief, as did Alan. “Have you flipped your wig? Okay, just assuming Eddie’s theory about the drugs is right-and for the record, I can’t even believe I’m lending credence to anything that ape’s ever said-but just to give the devil his due, you’ve been dosing yourself for what, maybe a couple days? What makes you think you’ve built up a resistance to the zombies? Because your mind is eroding, what, there must be a positive side to the effects of the drugs? Look at the back of your shirt.”

“I can’t,” Karl said. “It’s behind me.”

“It’s stuck to your skin, and that isn’t sweat. What the fuck have you been doing to yourself, as if we don’t hear?” Ellen made the whip-crack sound with her mouth, adding a wrist flick for punctuation. Karl plucked at the back of his shirt and sure enough it was a bit stuck to his spine. Ellen widened her eyes at him in challenge. “Pussy whipped for Jesus much?”

“Well, anyway,” Karl said, wiping his fingers on his pants, then burying the offending digits in his front pocket, “I’m going. Someone has to go. Someone has to put this to the test. To prove either that the drugs work for us, or we have an umbrella of protection from proximity to Mona. That her gift, whatever you want to call it, maybe it spills out and would protect a companion.”

“Great. Operation Big Umbrella.” Ellen scowled. The little idiot’s mind was made up. “Well. I’m not even giving you a shopping list. I told Mona what I want, but you, you I’ll say good-bye to. Not farewell or till we meet again, but good-bye.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Karl pouted.

“I have none to give. You want me to lie? Fine, I’ll catch you on the flip-flop, my man. But seriously? It was nice knowing you.”

Karl accepted Ellen’s remarks and made for the door, accompanied by Alan.

“Have you told the others about your proposed expedition?” Alan asked.

“Yeah. Eddie said he wanted to go first, not a little pussy like me, but when I said I might get killed, my guinea-pig status met his approval. Anything you want from me? Art supplies or something?”

“Just come home safe.”

Karl stopped and looked up at Alan, emotion swelling in his chest, which felt corseted. Eddie had been his usual self; Dave gave him a pat on the back, but that was about all; Abe was in a Valium-induced state of apathy; Dabney, drunk as a lord, yelled at him, accusing him of hubris and overweening arrogance. He’d begun to cry and then kicked Karl out of his new apartment, locking the door after Karl had been so summarily dismissed. And now Ellen’s dressing down. Alan was the only one to wish him well. What was wrong with this world? That was the million-dollar question in a world where a million dollars meant nothing. Alan and he shook hands and then hugged, Alan clapping Karl’s back and then realizing as Karl winced that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Alan looked at his hand, seeing traces of blood on it, and began to apologize, but Karl appreciated the gesture.

“One thing,” Alan said, his tone cautionary. “I don’t know if those things have regular senses, but I know sharks are drawn to the scent of blood, so you should really do something about your back. I know it’s still hot, but maybe a jacket? Something?”

“I hadn’t even thought of that. Oh Jesus.”

“Yeah. Just a thought.”

Karl ran upstairs and pulled off the shirt, the material stuck to some scabbing spots, making them bleed afresh. He poured some water down his back. He needed something stronger. If the lash wounds were there to appease a cruel God, maybe something to exacerbate the pain would go over well. In lieu of rubbing alcohol, he fetched a bottle of cheap vodka from his cupboard and poured it over the wounds. The stinging pumped tears out of his eyes as if he were rerouting the liquid cascading down his spine through his tear ducts. He stung everywhere and the stench of the liquor overwhelmed the room. It burned his nostrils and singed his injured back. Patting his back dry with a towel, Karl then bound his torso in Saran Wrap to seal in any scent of blood. He popped a couple of pills, pulled on a fresh shirt and his windbreaker, then made his way to Mona’s, his body tingling. Hoping it would further mask his potentially delectable aroma, Karl threw a few items into a knapsack, then slung it over his back. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the booze absorbed through the wounds, maybe it was adrenaline, but his back was numb. He felt no pain, physical or emotional.

As he passed the Fogelhuts’ door he gave it a hard knock. “Wish me luck, old man!” Karl shouted. Silence. He drummed the door with palms flat. No reply.

Fine. Be that way.

“Let’s do this,” was Karl’s mantra all the way down.

Let’s do this.

Let’s do this.

35

Mona paused on the roof of Dabney’s van to watch Karl struggle down the rope. Abe and Dabney aside, the others had all come to see the twosome off and to witness what would happen next. Karl touched down on the roof, losing his footing for a moment. Mona grabbed him around the waist as he steadied himself. Like an overheated radiator venting steam, the onlookers released a collective sigh of relief. Karl’s heart pounded so hard he was afraid the zombies might hear it. Gripped in equal measure by terror and euphoria, Karl surveyed the scene around the van: innumerable undead below, friends and neighbors above, the world everywhere. Karl hadn’t seen the exterior of 1620 in half a year. How could something so prosaic seem so beautiful?

“This is a real Kodak moment,” Alan said.

“True that,” agreed Eddie, as did the others whose hearts labored almost as hard as Karl’s.

“Okay,” Karl said to himself. “I can do this.” He looked up at the sky, which seemed bigger and bluer than it had on their roof, some four stories above. He was eye level with the Phnom Penh Laundromat sign. A pigeon skeleton was nestled between the brick and the sign, a couple of feathers still clinging to the husk. Karl looked away from the tiny carcass to the larger, ambulatory ones at street level. “Oh Jesus,” he gasped. Several were looking in the direction of the van, attracted by the activity. “Oh sweet Jesus.”

“Lemme spread ’em out,” Mona said, hopping down onto the pavement.

With a soft thud, Mona hit the ground. The response from the zombies was almost instantaneous. They began to back away, their sibilant hissing more penetrating at this proximity. It was a sound that traveled up and down Karl’s spinal cord. It lingered, for emphasis, in the lower colon and upper throat, seizing and massaging both with dead, constricting fingers. He could feel liquid collecting beneath his Saran Wrap armor, the brine basting his wounds. His mother used to marinade roasts overnight in the fridge, bound in cling wrap. He hoped he wouldn’t prove to be as tasty to the uninvited guests below. With an iris opened in the crowd, Mona gestured for Karl to join her on the asphalt. It’s now or never, Karl thought. He released his grip on the rappelling rope and eased himself off the van, first sitting on the edge, then lowering his legs until they were straight, then dropping to Mona’s side. The zombies stayed at bay.

“So far so good,” he whispered.

“Mm.” Mona proceeded, noncommittal, taking a step north. Her pace was slow, deliberate-with Karl in tow, slower than usual. She gave the zombies plenty of time to soak up her mojo and make way. Without actually holding onto her, Karl kept close to Mona, walking just slightly behind her. He’d never been this near to the zombies before, and up close, they were even fouler. The countless iterations on the theme of decay were staggering. Some, obvious victims of carnivorous attacks, were little more than haphazard collections of stumps and gristle, barely held together and yet still capable of locomotion. Limbs ended midway. Faces half consumed by rot-or just half consumed, period. Exposed bone. Internal organs that weren’t internal any longer. Karl never realized gums could recede so far. Their skin reminded Karl of overcooked fowl, matte, striated, thick and leathery yet translucent. Yellowed, browned, and blackened. Most eyes glazed by dull gray cataracts. Some stumbled around, sockets bereft of eyeballs. Cavernous nostrils, just vertical openings, black and rimmed with corrosion.

“They’re so horrible,” Karl stated. “They’re so fucking horrible.”

“I s’pose.” The response to a comment on the weather. Banal. But then again, zombies were the weather. A constant. Less interesting than the weather, actually. Weather changed. Karl’s walkie-talkie beeped and he removed it from its holster.

“Just testing,” came Alan’s voice. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, okay, I guess,” Karl said. “They’re hanging back, but it’s, uh, it’s kinda freaking me out, to be honest.”

“Of course,” Alan responded. “How could it not? But you’re out, buddy. You’re actually out there.”

Karl nodded in response, then snapped to and pressed the talk button. “Yeah, I’m out here. I’m out here. Look, I can’t walk and talk. I need to concentrate. Over.”

“Okay, Karl. Understood. Over and out.”

Karl clutched the walkie-talkie to his chest, a talismanic anchor to home. His face burned. They hadn’t even reached the corner and already he was hesitating. He looked back at the others, still in the windows. Ellen gave a very maternal wave of encouragement and Karl felt like he was back at his first day of school, Mom dropping him off, he being brave. Don’t cry, he thought. Please don’t cry.

As they headed north Karl gasped when a naked, hunched, gnomelike zombie edged into view. Its pigmentation was almost human and it bore no disfigurements other than its stooped posture and deep livor mortis in its lower extremities. It cast its nearly hairless head in Karl’s direction and he gasped. Ruth! She must have fallen from the roof and come unwrapped. Karl stood motionless, staring at his former neighbor. Of all the people he never wanted to see naked, Ruth might be number one on the list. He thought of the late Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

“What’s the delay?” Mona asked, not impatient.

“It’s Ruth.” He pointed.

“Uh-huh.”

Karl suppressed that urge to chastise Mona. It wasn’t like he’d just pointed out that the sky was above or that water was wet. This was kind of a traumatic big thing, Ruth ambling around. She wasn’t bitten by one of those things. She just came back all on her own. Didn’t that portend the same fate for anyone? For everyone? Regardless? How would Abe feel knowing his wife was scuttling around in the raw amidst the unclean? Tidy, persnickety Ruth Fogelhut in her birthday suit-or would that be deathday suit-loose amongst the natives. It was an ugly sight made uglier. With not a trace of recognition, Ruth’s dead eyes glared in his direction as he felt Mona’s hand tug at his arm.

“C’mon,” she said.

Opting to not radio back this piece of info, Karl nodded and kept step with Mona, whose pace was deliberate, mechanical. She’d likely have made a fine soldier. Maybe she’d been one. Maybe she was some military experiment gone wrong. Or right. She was immune to the zombies. Maybe she was a supersoldier prototype. Maybe her creators were all dead. Or maybe they were still alive in some bunker, monitoring Mona’s progress from a safe distance by means of a tiny tracking chip implanted within her.

How did one go about broaching a topic like that and not seem impertinent? Was “I was just wondering” the correct opening gambit? “So, are you some kind of genetically altered superbeing?” So, am I totally paranoid or retarded? Karl brooded as he trudged in Mona’s wake, the euphoria of being outdoors tabled for the nonce. The other thought, the one that kept cropping up, was whether or not she was even human. That posed an even trickier question of etiquette. “So, are you an angel of the Lord or a demon from Hell?”

“What?”

Mona stopped and looked at Karl with something approximating interest.

“Huh?” he replied.

“Am I demon from Hell?”

Karl began to sweat even more, his stomach doing flips. I said that out loud? rang through his skull. Idiot!

“What?” he stammered, attempting to feign innocence.

“You said-”

Karl cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Not you. No. Ruth, I was thinking about. Ruth. Over there. But she’s no angel, anyone can see that. Just a weird thing I was thinking. Just wanted to see how it sounded out loud.” He smiled inanely. “Crazy. Not you.” He made the loco gesture pointing at himself and shook his head.

“Uh-huh.”

Karl longed for his belt to give himself a few choice strokes. The sun seemed hotter down here than on the roof, like it was turned up or aimed by some giant sadistic kid with a magnifying glass-God as megabrat. The air didn’t move. Just the flies. Karl’s neck skin crawled and oozed perspiration. Between the mortification and fear, his back felt like it was covered with fire ants, the Saran Wrap bandage loosening as it filled with sweat, but hopefully not blood. It stung like the fucker of all mothers. Shouldn’t the weather be cooling down by now? No, it was still summer. Endless summer. Global warming plus zombies.

Yeah, humanity had somehow done this to itself.

Stupid humanity, Karl thought. Stupid me. How could I not realize I said that aloud? He wanted to stop thinking altogether for fear of a repeat bout of honesty Tourette’s. He needed to stay in Mona’s good books.

The Good Book.

Books.

That’s why they were making this expedition.

As they slogged west, Karl was reminded of the annual Puerto Rican Day parade, which commenced here on East Eighty-sixth. The crowd pushed back as Mona and he trekked up the center of the street, ankle deep in rotting limbs and rubbish. Maybe this was a little less festive. Karl surveyed the crowd. His mind was swimming, overstimulated. Their path was serpentine, weaving between forsaken vehicles and countless zombies. Inside one car a zombified child in a car seat thumped its head mindlessly against the window, the glass glazed with coagulated grue. That withered tot had been trapped in that car for nearly half a year and was still animate. Karl shuddered. The seemingly eternal question once again flitted into his head: How long will it be before these things just run out of steam?

Books.

Let’s do this.

Let’s do this.

“I need to hit the bookstore.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah. Abe said he wanted some books to better himself. Yeah. That’s something, a man his age. I guess that’s kind of admirable. ’Course he could just be bored, but still.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I need some further scriptural reading, too. To maybe find some answers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You really never encountered any other survivors during your travels?”

“Nope.”

“That’s so weird. You ever try calling out? Seeing if maybe you got any response?”

“Nope.”

She might be lying. If she were a demon it would be her duty to lie, to please her unholy master. Karl cleared his throat, then hollered, “Is anyone out there?” as loud as possible. He repeated it a couple of times but the only reply was increased agitation in the zombies that flanked them. Mona punched Karl on the bicep and squinted.

“Don’t,” Mona said. “Riles ’em.”

“It’s just, if there was anyone out there I…”

“Just don’t.”

“Okay. Sorry. I was just… Sorry.”

On they trudged, the zombies hanging back, frustrated. The experiment so far was a success. Karl hadn’t been eaten. Big success. Huge. This could change everything. As they neared First Avenue, Karl felt buoyed by their progress. The sun no longer felt amplified, it felt invigorating. His leg muscles felt purposeful. He looked up at the sky, which was clear and blue, and felt glorified. He felt closer to God than he had in ages. Or at least fonder. Midway between First and Second, the shrink-wrap around Karl’s midriff burst and pinkish brine splashed the pavement. Mona whipped her head around, startled by the wet sound. She stared at the puddle at Karl’s feet.

“Your water just break?”

Mona cracking a joke was almost as alarming as the amplified interest the zombies displayed. The scent of his natural soup was like sounding the dinner gong. Though they hung back, their rancor was heightened. The sounds emanating from their cracked, broken faces threatened to void Karl’s colon.

“Oh God. Oh Jesus,” he whimpered. He wanted to drop to his knees and pray.

“Keep moving.”

With stinging liquid dripping from his back, Karl followed Mona’s edict. The trip back to the building now seemed like miles rather than a couple of blocks. Long blocks. Avenue blocks, which were at least double the length of north-south ones. Abe and his books. Abe. What had Abe ever done for him? What was he thinking, volunteering for this madness?

Volunteering?

He’d suggested it.

Karl wanted to strangle himself.

Don’t blame Abe. You wanted that pill book. You did. Blame yourself.

“Get the fuck offa me!” Alan shrilled, swatting away Abe’s palsied hands.

Abe moaned from the pits of his collapsed lungs, pushing up plumes of stale, mucus-scented reek. This wasn’t what Alan had expected when he came a-knockin’ on Abe’s door. Ever since Ruth’s demise, Alan felt bad for the old guy, up here all alone. But this was bullshit. At first, once he’d gotten Abe’s door open, he’d thought the old man was just disoriented, the way he was bumping up against the windowsill. Maybe too much Valium. But once Abe had turned around Alan knew he’d joined the ranks of the undead. And now here he was, wrestling with a zombified oldster in a fusty apartment that smelled of mothballs and something worse.

Alan managed to knock Abe to the ground, upon which he heard Abe’s hip splinter. Abe grasped at Alan, but like the old commercial, he’d fallen and couldn’t get up. Alan felt queasy. This wasn’t comfortably impersonal like his relationship to the things below. This was Abe. Abraham Fogelhut, bearing out the cliché that when one half of an elderly couple perishes the other usually follows in close order-only now they came back. Alan scanned the room, looking for something to put Abe out of his misery, but saw nothing obvious. With Abe scraping brittle nails against the grain of the rug, trying to rise and failing, Alan reached the door, stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. He felt pretty certain Abe wouldn’t be mastering the doorknob, let alone getting himself up and about any time soon. Alan gulped some deep breaths, smoothed the front of his shirt, and then headed down to let the others know about Abe’s condition.

36

“It gets merrier and merrier around here,” Ellen said, sourness sliming off her tongue. “So what do we do?”

“We have to get rid of him, obviously.”

“It’s come to this. Evicting our senior citizens,” Ellen said, her wryness not abating.

“Well, yeah,” Alan agreed.

“Ugh. The peachiness of this whole situation is really beginning to wear on me, you know? You die, you come back as one of those. Delightful. Being alive is just the next step to being undead. You think anyone just stays dead any more? Or is that passé?”

Alan shrugged.

“Some must stay dead,” Ellen continued. “They must. I mean it’s not like there’s eight million zombies out there. The streets are packed, but not that packed. But maybe they are. Like I know anything. There are probably apartments all over the city packed with zombies too stupid to let themselves out. Fuck. I thought I knew where we stood on this but we don’t know anything. I thought it was rat bites or poison gas or some communicable germ or whatever, but it’s just how it is now. We come back. Awesome.” Ellen took a sip of tepid herbal tea and repositioned her hair clip. “This tea is supposed to calm the nerves.” She let out a derisory laugh. “So whattaya think? Is Karl doing great or does Mona return a solo act?”

“Um.”

“Yeah, well, if Mona makes it back-and I see no reason to doubt she will unless Karl’s managed to fuck up her good thing-she’s bringing me a little something special to take care of our situation. So, maybe I’m a little edgy. Just a little. A tad.”

“What situation?”

“Don’t be fucking obtuse, Alan. The baby.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ It’s the kind of situation that merits that kind of response. And don’t worry. I don’t hate you. You’re right. When you’re right you’re right and you’ve been right all along to think having this baby was wrong. It’s wrong. So today I make it right and take care of it. It’ll be taken care of.”

Alan let out a long breath, half relief, half sympathy, half something else. That was one too many halves, but the sigh was full of subdued emotion. He didn’t know what to do. Pat her on the back? Give her a hug? He stepped over and extended his arms for the latter, but Ellen made no effort to accept the embrace.

“This isn’t a huggy moment,” Ellen said, voice flat. “It is what it is, and all without the hassle of pro-lifers to complicate things. That’s pretty all right. I call that progress. Whattaya think the pro-lifers’ stance on aborting a fetus in a dead world would be? Would that still be so bad? Not that it matters, but we’re making conversation while we put off Abe’s expulsion from the building. I’m ragging on you. Don’t give me that look. He has to go. Neighbors who will eat their fellow neighbors are not to be permitted. I think that’s in the charter. What? What’s that look?”

Alan wasn’t aware of what look he wore, but he felt completely flummoxed.

“No look,” he said, his voice soft with apprehension. “No look. Just my face.”

“If you say so. So, maybe one horror show will take my mind off what’s on my mind, if you follow. You wanna go deal with Abe and toss him or what? I’m game if you are. I could use the exercise.”

Alan fidgeted for a moment, chewing his lip till he drew blood. The coppery taste was unpleasant. Abe was one of their own. But Ellen was right: no zombies allowed. Eddie would probably relish a go, what with some of Abe’s previous remarks at his expense, but Abe deserved better. He deserved to be put to final rest with some kindness. Some dignity, if such a thing was now possible.

“Sure. Let’s get it over with.”

“He’s feisty for a dead man with a busted hip,” Ellen observed as she forced Abe’s head down with a mop, the spongy pad pressed hard against the old man’s windpipe. Abe’s arms flailed impotently at his attackers.

“Maybe we should get the others,” Alan suggested, having second thoughts. “Eddie would…”

“No Eddie. We don’t need that throwback to help us.”

Alan looked at Abe. It wasn’t Abe any more, but it was. It still looked like Abe. He wasn’t some rotting thing. Not yet, anyway. His eyes weren’t glazed over and remote; there was rage in those undead orbs. Rage and confusion. Abe caught Ellen’s pants cuff in his spastic fingers and tugged, pulling her low riders a bit lower, exposing the elastic of her thong.

“Uh-uh-uh, you dirty old man,” Ellen scolded, but the humor was gone. This wasn’t funny, even in the sickest way. She pushed the mop harder into Fogelhut’s throat, the pressure precipitating a volley of excruciatingly thick, wet sounds of strangulation and cartilage being demolished. Alan fought the urge to retch or pass out and grabbed a large towel from the bathroom, which he quickly threw over Abe’s face, partly to muzzle him, partly to mask him. Alan didn’t want to see that mechanical simulation of life. With the towel firmly secured over the old man’s face, Ellen released the mop. Alan blinked away tears. This was so not right. Abe had probably slipped away into a peaceful, Valium-smoothed death, yet here he was, snapping at them. Abe rocked back and forth, his legs useless. That broken hip had hobbled him. He wouldn’t even be able to shamble around out there.

“Keep the towel over his face,” Alan snapped. “And sit on his chest. Something to keep him still.”

“What? Aren’t we going to toss him?”

“We are. But in a minute. Hold his arms.”

On the floor Abe undulated, the towel tied firmly over his whole head. He looked like a hostage, crippled and hooded. Alan looked around the room, then spotted a large burnt-orange alabaster ashtray. As he hefted it, feeling its substantial weight and solidity, he remembered his own mom had one similar back when he was a kid.

Alan stalked over to Abe’s wiggling recumbent form, lofted the ashtray in a high arc, then brought it down hard on the old man’s skull, pulverizing it. The sound, muffled though it may have been, was sickening, but to make sure, Alan repeated the motion five times until there was only crunchy pulp beneath the soaked terry cloth. Ellen edged back, mouth hanging open, her bout of grim wit quelled by Alan’s benevolent savagery.

Without asking for her assistance, Alan lifted the inert body, walked it over to the window and dropped it out. He stared as Abe’s body rested for a moment on the surface of the crowd below like a body surfer in a mosh pit, before it was absorbed, the new addition sinking to the pavement, lost, soon to be trampled into paste.

No eulogy.

Nothing.

Ellen let some tears escape, not even sure who or what they were for.

Alan offered no comfort.

They both retreated to their respective apartments and closed the doors.

And Eddie caught a big one on the roof.

Three rooftops away from the hump angling, Dabney stubbed out his umpteenth chain-smoked cigarette. Eyes watery and throat scorched from the combination of butts and booze he’d been consuming since Karl and Mona debarked, Dabney divided his fogged attention between the idiot antics of the meatheads and periodically looking for any sign of their return. He didn’t know how long it had been since they left. His watch had died.

Eddie had certainly gotten his recreational sadism down tight. The big greaseball would catch one and reel it in with almost no effort, then go to town on it with his trusty box of tools. Wrenches, hammers, pliers-the works. Did it count as torture if the victims weren’t strictly human or strictly alive? Dabney could imagine congressional hearings on that subject. The freckly mick, Dave, at one point had been cheerleader, spending time offsides shouting halfhearted variations on “Rah-rah, go team go!” Pathetic. But lately he just sat on the wall, head in his hands, brooding, watching his buddy.

Dabney jiggled the bottle by the neck, listening to the liquid slosh around. The bottle had been mostly full when the two had left. Now it was more than half gone. Either Dabney had gone through it fast or it had been a while. He looked over at the other roof. Three dismembered zombies lay in a heap. Catches of the day. Funny way to gauge the passage of time without a timepiece, Dabney mused, too drunk to take into account the position of the sun or other such time-honored pre-Swiss Quartz movement methods. He should have asked Karl to pick up a fresh battery.

Karl.

Would that naïve cracker make it home in one piece? Karl was a poor substitute for his own dead offspring, but Dabney’d made him his surrogate son and he hated the thought of losing him. He remembered ruffling Karl’s oily hair. Such a small thing, but he wanted to do it again. When Karl made it back he’d palm that boy’s head and mess that hair up good. And now that he’d been bathed a bit, it might even be like white-boy hair ought to be: dry and strawlike, like he imagined Opie’s would be. The thought made him smile until his brain converted “when” to “if.”

“God dammit.”

He tossed the bottle off the roof and, too loaded to go downstairs, tottered to his lean-to sleep it off.

Eddie yanked the last tooth from his catch’s mouth and flicked it from the pliers’ jaws onto the pile he’d made. He wore a necklace of ears around his tanned neck, having copped the idea from some ’Nam movie he’d seen. He reached over and retrieved a hacksaw from the box and commenced removing the forearm of the struggling wretch beneath his knees. Eddie hoped they felt pain. They made sounds like they did. Sweat dripped off his bare shoulders, the bandana stretched across his forehead keeping his eyes perspiration-free.

“Yeah, like buttah,” he grinned, as the blade sliced through the skin and muscle straight to the bone, then right on through that. These things were seriously malnourished. Sometimes their flesh fell away like well-cooked ribs, not that he had any appetite to try zombie meat. Certainly not since the Mona gravy train rolled in. But it was uncanny how some of these humps had tough, leathery hides and others fell apart like nothing. A few shredded to bits while they were still on the line. A couple of firm yanks to get them over the roof’s edge and they were meaty jigsaw puzzles. Disappointing.

Eddie held the extremity up and looked into the bones, which were hollow. Wasn’t there supposed to be marrow in there? Eddie’s pop had been a marrow sucker, which was totally gross. As a kid he’d watch his pop dig this nasty brown paste out of the bones of whatever meat dish mama had made, and then suck the bone. When Eddie was hungry he’d feel the acid in his stomach eating away the lining. He remembered hearing something about how when you’re starving you begin to digest yourself. That’s what these humps must be doing, only there was nothing left to digest.

At this point maybe it was just a waiting game. The Comet knew facts they didn’t.

“Smarter than the average bear,” Eddie said, beaming.

“What? Who?” Dave asked, his eyes averted from Eddie’s actions.

“The Comet. I’m conducting some scientific Frankenstein shit all up in this bitch. Who was onto Mona’s drug therapy? The Comet. Who knew the humps were falling apart? The Comet.” Sweat escaped the bandana and ran right into Eddie’s eyes. “Motherfucker,” he said with a wince. With one forearm he wiped away the offending liquid, with the other he pulverized the hump’s head with a wrench. “That’s a solid day’s work. Those bitches,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “they don’t have any appreciation for the work I’m doing up here. I’m breaking scientific ground like that nigger who made peanut butter.”

Dave shot a look over at Dabney.

“What?” Eddie beefed. “I’m paying him a compliment. I fuckin’ like peanut butter. Anyway, other than the spooky bitch, who else earns his keep around here? Who else is proactive? Remember that proactive and paradigm shit they used to throw at us at work?”

Dave nodded.

“Remember that time Staci Kulbertson-Tim McTaggert’s assistant-remember when she got loose at that company party? That was ill, bro. She was shakin’ that ass like she was trying to get rid of it. I’d of taken it off her hands, bro.”

Dave stared at Eddie, not knowing what to say. Where was this coming from?

“Man, I’m sweatin’ like a bitch,” Eddie said, grinning. “It’s man’s work wasting these humps. I wish it would rain again so I could shower, know what I’m sayin’?”

Dave nodded.

“Cat got your tongue, Davis?”

“No, Eddie.”

“So what’s the what, bro? Why the long fuckin’ face?”

“I can’t do this any more, Eddie” Dave said, tears beginning to moisten his cheeks. “This isn’t normal. This is some fucked-up Abu Ghraib shit you’re doing up here.”

“Technically that shit wasn’t torture,” Eddie sneered.

“Maybe. I can’t take much more, anyway. This is some seriously repugnant shit. It’s sickening. And if you weren’t so gaga from those pills-”

Eddie rose from his task, bloodied wrench gripped white-knuckle tight in his fist, disgust burning in his wide-open eyes. Dave edged away. Eddie’s eyes weren’t right. They danced in their sockets, animated by lunacy and carnage.

“Why don’t you blow me?” Eddie snarled.

“That’s real mature.”

“It wasn’t a figure of speech. I mean it. Blow me.”

“That gravy train’s over, Eddie,” Dave said, now stifling sobs. “Maybe it took the apocalypse to realize what I am, but it’s over. Seriously. We’re finished. Done. You’ve got your porn. You’ve got your hobby. You’ve got your problems. But me? Me you don’t get. Not any more,” Dave said, voice cracking. Then he spun around and made a break for it, leaping the low hurdles as he’d done countless times before. Eddie pursued, but his athleticism fell more into brute categories than those utilizing speed and agility. Dave got to the stairwell housing and down two flights of steps before his wolfish buddy was even to the middle roof that separated them.

“Fuckin’ little bitch cunt faggot!” Eddie screamed as the door slammed shut.

“Huh?” Dabney sputtered, coming to. “Whuzzat?”

“Go back to sleep, old man,” Eddie muttered as he slunk into the building, closing the door behind him.

37

“Typical,” Karl moaned, clicking the talk button. Nothing. The walkie-talkie was out of range.

The exterior of the bookstore was blackened, a fire having devastated the establishment. Though the doors were locked, the windows had burst and tiny fragments of safety glass littered the frontage.

“It’s trashed,” Mona said.

Duh, Karl thought. Instead he said, “Why didn’t you tell me before we got here? You must’ve been this way before. Did this just happen?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, we’re here. Might as well go in. Maybe there’s something salvageable.”

“I dunno.”

“Chicken?”

Karl felt penny ante for having utilized a grade school taunt, but it worked. Mona advanced toward the gaping maw of a former display window, gingerly poked at the jagged edge, flicking away some loose chips of glass, then stepped into the charred cavern of the store’s interior. Karl followed straightaway, wondering if he could just walk along unescorted. He wished he could stop sweating. He felt parched.

“So?” Mona shrugged.

“So now I browse. I promised Abe a few books. Plus, I need something, too.”

The air inside was heavy with the stench of charred matter; walls were festooned with peeling scablike wallpaper, scored and scorched. The display tables had either collapsed from the conflagration or stood like crude ziggurats, the books atop them stepped masses of blackened ruin. The floor was slathered in a thick charcoal paste of burnt paper and stagnant water, perhaps from the sprinkler system, and each step they took was accompanied by a voracious sucking sound. The downstairs was a washout, but maybe upstairs was better. Two escalators divided the main room, both leading up into pitch darkness.

“Did you bring a flashlight?” Karl peeped, feeling dumb for not having done so. Mona nodded, and while grateful, Karl hated her for being better prepared. She dipped into her Hello Kitty knapsack and fished out two headlamps, the first of which she handed to Karl. She then slipped the other over the crown of her head and flicked it on, resembling a miner sans helmet. The beam cut a ghostly white swath through the murk.

“Jeez, that’s bright,” Karl marveled.

“Xenon bulb,” Mona answered, as if that meant anything to Karl.

“What’s something like this cost?” Karl asked, flicking his lamp on as they made their way up the defunct escalator. He regretted the question immediately when Mona looked back, the light from her forehead blinding him, but not before he caught the what-a-stupid-thing-to-say expression on her face. When they reached the landing they stood side by side, doping out the lay of the land. The left side of the mezzanine was trashed, but the right didn’t look too bad. The nice thing was that it was empty, save for the furnishings and merchandise.

“You have any water?” Karl asked, hoping his lack of preparedness was more forgivable than his previous query.

“Uh-huh.” Mona handed him a bottle of water. After a few swigs Karl made to hand it back, but Mona waved it off with a curt, “Got my own.” That she’d anticipated his absence of foresight made him flush anew.

The bad news was that the “Medicine and Science” section was toast. At least he wouldn’t have to explain his need for a copy of the Physician’s Desk Reference to Prescription Drugs or the like. With resignation, Karl lumbered over to “Literature” and selected a few slightly singed copies of the classics for which Abe had been pining. Mona stared off into space nearby, chewing something. Karl didn’t care to ask. He’d asked enough dumb questions for one day.

“Okay, I guess that’ll do me,” he said, replacing the full knapsack over his tenderized back with great care. As they made for the escalators he spied on a remainder table a stack of fairly intact copies of the massive hardcover celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Playboy magazine. He’d really wanted that book but at the time couldn’t afford it. Pangs of chastity and guilt boomeranged around the inside of his noodle, laced with regrets over having divested himself of his porn and sexual trophies.

Except for Lourdes Ann Kananimanu Estores-Miss June 1982.

She’d be in there. Maybe even her whole set, to keep the lonely centerfold in his drawer company. This was almost worse than having to explain away a copy of the PDR. No guy wants to be caught procuring whacking material in the company of a female. Fresh sweat began to leak. This is ridiculous, Karl thought. Why should I care what she thinks of me? It’s only Playboy, for God’s sake. It’s not like it’s real porn. It’s pinups. Why am I justifying this to myself? This barely qualifies as a sin. It was a sin to have thrown away the bounty I had. This is just a little compensation for my loss.

With that, Karl snatched a copy of the cumbersome volume off the table. If Mona cared a jot, it didn’t register on her face. Karl’s reddened nonetheless as he reconfigured the contents of his knapsack to accommodate the large tome. Almost to spite Mona, he snagged a second copy. A gift. With Ellen expecting, surely Alan would appreciate a treasury of the finest fillies ever to walk the earth. Karl wedged it in, then-with even greater tenderness-reaffixed the laden backpack and stepped into Mona’s wake.

Whereupon the charred floor gave way.

And Mona’s face, staring at the hole through which Karl had dropped, actually registered surprise.

Karl couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t feel anything, other than remorse, embarrassment, and the near certainty that these were likely his final thoughts. Typical, he thought again. He could move his eyes, and aided by the beam of his headlamp could make out that he was upside down. Or at least his head was. The rest of him he couldn’t see and apparently moving his head wasn’t an option. He opened his mouth and produced a pitiable mewl, drool running into his nostril. Above him he could hear the faint creaks of Mona tiptoeing to the escalator, weighing each step, making herself as buoyant as possible.

Once on more solid ground, she raced down the long flight of metal stairs and deposited herself directly in Karl’s line of sight. Even upside down, Karl could see she was upset, and that pressed his panic button. A postfall dreaminess had temporarily quelled his mounting hysteria, but seeing Mona’s semivegetative visage register distress was profound and terrifying. She didn’t say anything, but as her eyes took in the damage, the unspoken appraisal was clearly bad news. The worst.

“Can you speak?”

Karl wasn’t sure if she said it or he did. His thoughts were jumbled. His head was the only body part he could feel, and it felt like a water balloon full to bursting. His eyes felt like the pressure behind them would soon propel them across the room. He was panting.

“Can you speak?”

It was Mona. He wasn’t saying anything. She touched his face, drying his drool and sweat with a tissue plucked from her silly cartoon knapsack. Upside down, the bag seemed so cute. Mona’s face seemed childlike. She didn’t seem cold and remote-just fragile and damaged. She’s fragile and damaged. Karl smirked-or at least thought he did; it was hard to tell, what with being numb all over.

“Can you speak?”

Karl’s vision was dimming or the battery on his headlamp was failing. Maybe a little of both. One from column A, one from column B. No soup with buffet. Karl smiled at Mona. Upside down, it’s sometimes hard to read another person’s expression. “I can’t move you,” Mona said, her voice thin.

Upside down or not, she was lovely. He pondered how he could have been so judgmental of this otherworldly waif. Mona was no demon. He was certain, finally.

“You’re too…” She faltered, searching for the right way to say what there was no right way to say. She sighed and squinted, then looked away from his body, which was twisted at the midriff, his legs pointing east, his torso west. Karl thought about the incinerated medical section. That might have come in useful right about now. Stay focused, he thought. Remain lucid. Remain. “Broken.” She’d finished her thought.

He tried to speak but each attempt choked him, his Adam’s apple straining, pressing upwards, crushing the words. The Adam’s apple. The laryngeal prominence. He remembered that from one of those atlases of the human body with the clear overlaid pages. Cross sections of the various systems. Filet of human. How many parts of his anatomy were broken, as Mona put it? All the important ones? Why was Mona immune? Karl clenched his jaw, then with great effort managed, “Wha moon?”

“Why moon?”

“Wha roo moon?” Mona shook her head, uncomprehending. “Wha roo moon?”

“Something about the moon?”

Pointless. “Ah gobba gub,” Karl strained, sputtering up fluid, which she mopped away.

“Huh?”

“Imma bag. Ah gobba gub.”

“Your bag?”

“Yuh.”

Mona opened his bag and felt around. More surprise registered-it was a banner day. With great reluctance she produced a handgun from Karl’s backpack.

“You had this the whole time?” Mona was becoming a regular chatterbox.

“Yuh.” Big Manfred wasn’t about to let his boy head off to New Sodom unarmed. Karl had left it tucked away in its case since he’d arrived in New York, but today seemed the correct occasion to bring it out. He hadn’t anticipated being its target, though.

“And what am I…”

“Shoo muh.”

“I don’t…”

“Peez.”

“Can you feel anything?”

“Nuh.”

“I’ll be back.”

Karl watched her form as it trotted to the blown-out windows, stepped over the threshold, tossed the gun away, and disappeared from view.

38

Alan heard a sharp whistle from the street followed by the squawk of the walkie-talkie that announced Mona’s return. He tore himself away from the touch-ups he’d been doing on an earlier canvas of Mona only to see the real McCoy outside, solo, not looking quite as detached as usual. Solo. Alan tore down the stairs and into 2B, so upset by her arriving stag that he didn’t even alert the others. As he dropped the rope for her readmittance Mona was just climbing onto the roof of Dabney’s van. Ellen stepped up and looked over his shoulder, giving Alan a start.

“Where’s Karl?” she asked.

“Good question.”

Mona’s explanation, monosyllabic and fragmented, managed to paint an ugly portrait of Karl splayed on the carcass of a display table, his upper story turned this way, his lower that, and leaking fluids like a hooptie. Ellen fought the urge to ask if this accident happened before or after Mona had managed to score her “morning after” pills. Timing.

“We have to get him out of there,” Alan said, affecting calm. “He can’t just be left there to die, or worse, be eaten alive. Before he fell, that whole umbrella thing was working out pretty well for you?” Mona nodded. “Right.” Alan exhaled heavily and pushed back on his chair, the front legs off the floor. He didn’t want to go out there, but duty called. He walked over to the front window and looked at the horde. “Ugh,” he said. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Do what?” Ellen said. “Go out there? No way. You’re not even primed at all.”

Alan whipped his head back at her, flashing the say-no-more look.

“Oh give me a break, Alan,” Ellen said, not having it. “Karl’s out there snapped like a rotten branch and you want to protect the pact of betrayal? Fuck that. You’re not going out there. Let Eddie go. Or Dave. They were so fucking eager to invade Mona’s stash, let ’em put it to the test.” Ellen paused and looked over at Mona, a slightly patronizing tone creeping into her voice. “Mona, sweetie, those guys-Karl included-have been filching your pills to-”

“I know,” Mona said.

“You know?”

“Yeah. I can count.”

“You knew and you let it happen? But they invaded your space. They violated your trust. I didn’t want to keep it secret, but frankly the gorillas in our midst spook me.”

“I know.”

“She knows.” Ellen felt almost as annoyed at Mona for knowing and keeping mum as she felt about the conspirators’ theft in the first place. “So why didn’t you say something?”

“Like what?”

“Like, ‘stop stealing my drugs,’ for starters. What is wrong with you? What are they even taking? These clowns have convinced themselves the pills are your secret weapon, you know, against the zombies. And you knew? I can’t believe it.”

“Hard not to.”

Alan stepped away from the window, Karl’s plight temporarily cast aside. He was probably dead, anyway. “Hard not to what? Notice the theft?”

“Side effects.”

“Ooooh,” the couple said in unison. Eddie and Dave’s rooftop activities. Karl’s schizo religiosity. Side effects. They seemed like natural progressions. Or regressions. But not unexpected. Still. Ellen and Alan felt pretty stupid.

“Severe contraindications,” Mona said, carefully pronouncing the words with a hint of a smile.

“So why do you take them?”

“Gotta,” Mona said, sounding not the least bit defensive.

“What are they?”

“Brain chemistry.”

“I just can’t believe you knew and let it happen,” Ellen said, shaking her head.

“I can get more.”

“So, if we’re putting our cards on the table,” Alan said, hesitating, “are they your secret? Could Karl have just gone out there on his own? Could Eddie?”

“Doubt it.”

“Why? If they’re taking what you’re taking.”

“Maybe after a few years.”

“Why? Why years? Why maybe?”

“They weren’t born addicted.”

“Born addicted.”

“Sort of.”

It was like pulling teeth from a toothless baby, but slowly a picture emerged of Mona’s mother. Not a harried housewife taking part in a clinical prescription-drug trial-just a plain old, garden-variety addict. Mona was chemically altered in the womb and chemically dependent out of it. Alan smiled as he mused, four toes on each foot. He remembered documentaries on PBS about thalidomide and crack babies. Four toes and a blunted persona were a lot better than flippers or no limbs at all. So this was the key to Mona’s immunity? As birth defects went, this one was as Darwinian as they came. Defect or evolution? Better living through chemistry, as the maxim went.

And when the drugs ran out, whither Mona?

Did she even need them any more?

Did she ever?

As Karl lay on the table contemplating his imminent demise, he failed to notice he’d shifted his weight off his hips and crossed his legs. From his upside down perspective he stared vacantly across the verge, to the street choked with undead. He glanced up at the hole through which he’d fallen, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jesus or some angel beckoning him forth, home, but no such luck. He wiped his forehead and started counting off the moments left.

“What a moron!”

Karl sat upright, feeling pins and needles where before he felt nothing.

“What an idiot!”

He looked at his hands, flexing the fingers and rotating the wrists.

“What a stupid ass! Thank you God! Thank you Jesus! Thank… Oops.”

Not being paralyzed equaled glee equaled lack of judgment equaled shouting. He turned toward the street and saw zombies staring back. “Oh, balls,” Karl peeped. The mob amassed by the window frames hadn’t quite figured out how to vault the two-and-a-half-foot wall that separated them from their appetizing quarry, but it was only a matter of time. Even if they didn’t have the smarts to lift one leg over, repeat, the shoving from the peanut gallery would deliver the first wave over the hump in a trice. Karl massaged his legs, trying to rid himself of the paraesthesia in his thighs and calves. They prickled under his palms, which did likewise. From no sensation to an overabundance in scant moments. Karl would feel blessed were he not on the verge of soiling himself in terror. He dropped to the floor, feeling wobbly, but feeling.

For a nanosecond he felt angry with Mona for leaving him, but she was no medico. She was just a girl. A spooky chick. But she’d gone for help. He couldn’t wait for her to return. She’d be pleased that she’d been wrong.

The floor felt solid. Then again, it had felt solid upstairs, too. The zombies’ ingress was looming. So much for Mona’s miracle drug. Fucking Eddie. How could he have been stupid enough to believe Eddie was right about anything? He was about as immune to zombies as an ice cube was to a hot plate. He tried the walkie-talkie again, to let Mona know he was up. Nothing but static. Karl did a little spastic two-step, a sort of silent comedian windup, but he didn’t know where to run. The divider between them and him was still doing the trick, but once they got in, it was going to be a big ol’ feeding frenzy. The first few zombies plopped over the partition and fell in heaps on the sooty ground, attempting to right themselves as more dropped on top of them. And then more. Karl aimed the beam from his headlamp up the escalator. What would the odds be of falling through the floor twice? Tempt fate by fleeing upwards or fulfill the obvious by sticking around down below? Caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Maybe he could make it to the roof. Then what? Jump? One thing at a time. On spongy legs Karl made for the escalator and gripped the rubbery handrails in a half pull, half run to the landing.

“Idiot!” he barked at the top, realizing he still bore the heavy knapsack.

As it dropped to the roasted floor Karl fled to the second-floor restrooms in the back. Maybe, like in the movies, there would be some air duct he could climb into that would lead to safety. He slammed into the men’s room-noting for a nanosecond how funny it was that even now he consciously chose it as opposed to the ladies’ room-and scanned the dark chamber, aiming the beam this way and that. Drop ceiling, but no grating, no duct. Typical, typical, typical. Don’t have faith in Eddie and never believe what you see in the movies. Idiot!

No lock on the entrance door, of course. He opened it and peeked out. The zombies still hadn’t made the mezzanine. There’s got to be a way out of here. Think. But without a floor plan it was just guesswork. The first wave of zombies had made it to the landing. Karl couldn’t see them yet, but he heard them shuffling, moaning, exuding pure need. Did they scent him, like hounds at the hunt? Maybe his odor was masked by the stink of char. His only option was the stall with the bolt lock. If he perched on the toilet and was very quiet, maybe they wouldn’t find him. Cripes. The moans were hungry. Purposeful. Oh Jesus. It sounded like there were a lot of them.

Tons.

Tons.

With a thunderous crash a large portion of the charred floor gave way.

It’s raining zombies. Hallelujah.

____________________

“Hey, Eddie,” Alan shouted across the roofs. “Can I tear you away from that for a minute?”

Eddie glared over at Zotz, then refocused on the struggler on his line. “The fuck do you want? Can’tcha see I’m busy?”

Alan approached with caution, staying one full rooftop away.

“Yeah, I can see that you’re busy, but this is important.”

“It’d better be,” Eddie snapped, cutting the line as it dipped. Stripped to the waist and glistening, Eddie strutted over to Alan. “The Comet hates letting little fishies get away, capisce?”

“Yeah. Look, Karl’s stranded at the Barnes and Noble on Eighty-sixth, between Second and Third. You wanna go, maybe help him out? According to Mona, he’s kind of busted up.”

“Figures,” Eddie sneered. “Send a twerp out to do a man’s work, this is what you get.”

“You’re all heart,” Alan said, involuntarily flinching in preparation for retaliation.

“Don’t I fuckin’ know it,” Eddie said, removing his bandana and mopping his forehead. “Karl wasn’t eaten or some shit like that, right? How was he busted up?”

“He fell through a hole in the floor.”

Eddie laughed. “Fuckin’ testa di merda. So he wasn’t chawed on? Just his own stupidity got his ass broke? Figures. So, was it Mona kept him safe, or the drugs?”

“I dunno. All I know is what she told me, and she’s a woman of few words.”

“I heard that. This is good. I wanna put my theory to the test, know what I’m saying? Fuck yeah. I’ll play hero with Tuesday Addams.”

“Tuesday Addams?”

“Yeah, the bitch from The Munsters. Christina Ricci played her in the movie, before her titties blew up.”

“Oh, that Tuesday Addams,” Alan said, thinking, it’s Wednesday, you fucking moron. From The Addams Family? Hello? “Mazel tov. I’ll go tell her.”

Fuckin’ Jew, Eddie thought as Alan headed back downstairs.

“The Munsters,” Alan groused. “Christ, I hope they eat that asshole.”

39

“You ready?” Alan asked the ever-more Rambo-like Eddie Tommasi.

“I was born ready,” Eddie said, eliciting smirks from Alan and Ellen. We know something you don’t know their internal singsong rejoinder.

Still shirtless, but now wearing urban camouflage pants and jump boots, Eddie dropped onto the roof of the DABNEY LOCKSMITH & ALARM van, his posture that of the stalwart hero of every action/adventure movie lensed from the eighties on up: knees bent, arms out and bent at the elbows, large hunting knife in hand. He even wore fingerless gloves.

Dave was too distraught to see Eddie off. Instead, feeling like an emotional coward, he sequestered himself in his apartment where he cried and began to drink heavily. Although Dabney had shared Dave’s current mindset when Karl set out, he very much wanted to witness Eddie’s departure. If the bastard returned a hero, so much the better, but if he were to get devoured right out of the gate, Dabney didn’t want to miss a single ligament-shredding second of it. “Good luck,” he murmured, toasting with a tumbler of bourbon. He mostly meant it, if only to ensure Karl’s safe return.

Once again, Mona created a clearing, then gestured for her companion to follow. With a defiant just-try-to-eat-me thud, Eddie dropped to the asphalt and glared roundly at the frothing skinbags. G’wan, he motioned, chin jutting. Wanna piece o’ me? C’mon. Nothing doing. Buoyed by their reluctance to encroach, Eddie stepped forward, following Mona’s pert, round behind. How long would he follow? Could he take the lead? He felt pumped. Even more pumped than on the roof. This was a major rush. Major.

Flanked by resentful spectators, the duo soldiered west on the main drag, their progress greeted by hissing and keening. Mona didn’t look back, just straight ahead toward their destination. Eddie didn’t care. She was nothing to talk to. He’d rather divide his focus between the crowd and the cleft of Mona’s ample, perfectly round butt. The seam of her pants emphasized the division between the cheeks. Oh yeah. Betwixt those orbs was pure, sweet honey. How many months had he wasted between Mallon’s flat Irish loaves? Mallon. Dave. His pasty potato-eatin’ keister, two slabs of lightly pimpled pancake, white as Wonder bread but not nearly as appetizing.

“So, you think Peewee is still alive?” Eddie said, breaking the silence.

“Huh?”

“Karl. You think he’s still alive?”

“Dunno.”

“He was getting’ kinda weird, there, clutchin’ that Bible kinda tight. You’d of thunk maybe he had God on his side. But maybe not.”

“Dunno.”

Dunno. Pfff. Always a pleasure talking to Mona. “You ever see that Ten Commandments movie? ‘Mmmyaaah, where’s yuh messiah, now, see?’ That shit’s funny, right? That’s what I’m gonna say to Karl when we catch up with him. All this…” Eddie gestured at the zombies, not that Mona saw, and continued, “I used to go to church, right? I mean, c’mon. Italian from Bensonhurst? Of course I’m Catholic to the bone, because of my moms. But this shit?” Another nod to the undead. “Who could believe in God? So I wanna ask Karl, where’s his messiah now?”

Nothing. No reply.

“What? You into God, too? Sorry to offend.”

“I’m not.”

“Not sorry or not offended?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

Even though they were in agreement, for some reason her response annoyed him. She probably never believed. It’s one thing to lose faith; it’s another never to have had it in the first place. That was kind of arrogant. Eddie didn’t believe in God, but atheists were assholes. Just as smug as born-agains, but colder. Like they were better than everyone else. Better not to talk. Better to just scope that pear-shaped ass. With each footfall one buttock would jiggle, then the other. It was hypnotic. As he allowed himself to be transfixed by Mona’s tush, Eddie started humming, then quietly singing, “I see you baby, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass…” Eddie used to dance like crazy to that song. He’d hit the clubs, make with the gyrations and then bring a hottie or two home for some pelvic mayhem. The more focused his reminiscences the louder his singing.

“ I see you baby, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass…”

“What?” Mona stopped walking and turned to face Eddie.

Woolgathering over, Eddie stared back into Mona’s fish eye.

“Nothin’,” he said. “Just singin’. Remember that one?” Mona shook her head. “It’s a good one. Groove Armada. That’s whose song it was. Yeah. I used to get kinda nice to that shit.”

Mona turned away and they resumed their trek. The second her back was turned Eddie stuck out his tongue, then embellished the gesture by flicking it back and forth between his splayed middle and index fingers. He’d never been big on cunnilingus, but he wouldn’t mind noshing on the delicacies in Mona’s undies. Not undies. Panties. Maybe she wore a thong. Oh shit. Or a G-string. Daaaamn. Eddie didn’t care. It was all good. And that ass. That fuckin’ ass. As they trudged on, slowly, deliberately, he felt the insistent surge of blood into his groin. Yeah. Like Moses’s fuckin’ staff.

“I see you baby, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass…”

Mona sucked her teeth in that gross disapproving way.

Don’t fuckin’ judge me, bitch, Eddie thought. I’ll fuckin’ rape that ass.

“I would, too,” he said. “Just try me.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” He fingered his necklace of zombie ears, ruminating on punishing that ass. But first things first: Karl needed some rescuing-the little wuss-so The Comet was on it. The zombie ears felt like suede. Or did they? Maybe it was his fingertips. His mouth tasted like the inside of his socks, the texture of his inside cheeks rough like terry cloth. And dry. So dry. Unlike Karl, Eddie had packed a canteen, and drank from it. As the water sluiced down his throat he remembered something from junior high.

“The brain’s fuckin’ weird,” Eddie said to the back of Mona’s head. He trotted forward and stood by her side as he continued. “You know? Like, I was just thirsty, right? So I guzzle some agua and what comes back to me? This fuckin’ book from when I was a kid, with this little baby Mexican or Indian. But I remembered his name: Coyotito. ’Cause as I was guzzling I remembered this line from the book, something about Coyotito’s little tongue lapping thirstily or greedily or some such gay-ass shit. I can’t remember what book, but I fuckin’ hated that kid and was glad when he got capped. That book sucked, but I remember some of it. ’Cept its name.”

“The Pearl.”

“Yeah. Fuck yeah, The Pearl. Holy shit, I can’t believe you knew that. That book sucked, am I right?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Eddie grinned thinking about that little brat taking lead in the cabeza. The more he thought about it the more that flooded back to him. In zombie movies head shots took care of everything. He looked at the throng as it held itself back, fighting its hardwired desire to tear the two of them to shreds. Eddie finger-popped an imaginary gun at them, each a rotting Coyotito just begging for a bullet-salad sandwich.

“And you know what else? Wow, it’s all coming back. That big Baby Huey retard and his little pal. Or was that a different book? Petting rabbits an’ shit. Same guy, though, right? The writer?”

“Steinbeck.”

“Yeeeeaaah. Him. Dude, he sucked.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Steinbeck. Was he a fuckin’ Jew? Is that Jewish?”

“Dunno.”

“Sounds Jewy. No offense, I mean if you’re a Jew. Jews are all right.”

“I’m not.”

“Not offended or not Jewish?”

“Neither.”

“Cool.”

Eddie’s mouth still felt like felt, dry and scabrous. The water didn’t help. He was sweating like a pig. Did pigs sweat? Isn’t that why they rolled around in their own filth, because they couldn’t sweat to cool off? And dogs. Dogs panted because they couldn’t sweat. Did any animal sweat? Sweating was sweet. Eddie wanted something sweet. A bomb pop would be the bomb, but Mister Softee had stopped making his rounds. Mister Softee, with his friendly waffle-cone face and whippy-do vanilla swirl bouffant.

“Try as he might he can never get hard / his name is Mister Softeeee!” Eddie sang to the tune of the old ice cream trucks’ clarion. “Deedle-ee-deedle-ee-dee-dee-dee-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-dummm. Remember that?”

Mona shrugged.

“Your loss, honey. Mister Softee was the shit.” Eddie polished off the water. Didn’t concern him. He’d pick up a bottle or five on the way home. “Yo, I’ve gotta take a leak. You mind?”

Mona shrugged, looking away. Eddie unzipped, aimed at the zombies nearby, and doused them. As they stood there and took it, Eddie grinned and shouted, “S’matta, your mamas never told you to come in from the rain?” No response. Not even wrath. Between the zombies and Mona… He shook off the last few droplets and tucked himself away.

“There’s a whole lotta shit we could steal out here in the world. Fuck, it ain’t even stealin’ no more. It’s just taking. Scavenging. It’s practically our patriotic duty.”

Mona shrugged.

The fuckin’ cooze was really chafing Eddie’s balls with her attitude. Was that all this was? Attitude? A woman shouldn’t ever come off attitudinal to a man. Even Eddie’s mom had agreed on that point, and when the occasion called for it, she didn’t protest a slap across the chops from Pops. Was that what this Mona bitch was begging for? Women liked it rough from time to time. Just a fact of nature. Eddie let himself lag just a little behind her again. He preferred her ass to her face, anyway. Plus, quiet from the ass is a virtue, especially on a woman. No one loves a gassy broad.

The Barnes & Noble loomed on the left.

“About time,” Eddie said. “We go in, find the little jerk. If he’s crippled I guess I’ll have to carry his worthless ass home. That’ll be great.”

A glint of light caught Eddie’s eye as they stepped toward the broken window. As Mona stepped over the verge, Eddie stooped over to investigate the shiny object: a new-looking satin-finished stainless Smith & Wesson 9mm. He felt that surge of arousal again. With Mona’s back still turned he surreptitiously slipped it into his pants pocket, fighting the urge to empty the clip into several nearby gristle puppets.

With Eddie away on his mercy mission-hard to fathom the word “mercy” in context with Eddie, but there it was-and Dave sequestered for the duration of his beau’s absence, Dabney comfortably resumed his station on the roof. With their so-called “flynchin’ ” activities on hold the roof felt safe again, even with the dismembered corpses of their last haul still lying in a heap three buildings away. Though it was evident they were beyond locomotion, Dabney maintained his distance. Why tempt fate? he thought. Even deeply soused he possessed some sense. More than he could say for the happy fishermen. It was quiet the way Dabney liked it. Just the light flutter of a breeze riffling through a torn sheet hung nearby, and the occasional moan from the street below. Not even flies buzzing around.

Dabney lit a cigarette from the tip of the one he’d just finished and felt decadent. In his days as a breadwinner he savored cigarettes and put some time between them. Last he was paying for this particular vice, coffin nails were going for nearly ten bucks a pack over the counter. He’d started buying from the Native Americans via the Internet for roughly half that price, but still, even at five he didn’t blow through them like they cost nothing. Now they did, so what the hell. Live a little, even if the living he was doing was sure to accelerate dying. He poured himself two fingers of bourbon and swished them around the glass to aerate the hooch. Fancy. Sophisticated. And again, it was “the good stuff.” He felt very James Bond. Or Shaft. Somebody debonair. That’s why he wasn’t just swigging out of the bottle.

He drank the two fingers and then poured another two.

How long had it been since Karl and Mona had gone out? How long since Mona and Eddie? Eight or ten fingers later-at least two hands’ worth-Dabney shakily put down the bottle and straddled the low dividing wall.

“Giddyup,” he slurred, wiping some boozy spittle from his stubbly chin. He dug his heels into the puckered tar paper and slapped the curved top of the wall. “Git along little dogies.” He thought of Woody Strode and began to tear up. Woody was long gone. Everything he cared about was.

Once upon a time his wife had called him “adorable.”

Once upon a time small children had called him “Daddy.”

Once upon a time he’d been his own boss.

Clumsily, Dabney hoisted his ass off the divider and loped putty limbed across the rooftop toward the pile of cadavers. He tripped over the second wall and fell, his numbed palms scraped raw on impact. He pulled himself off the ground and continued north, the mutilated corpses drawing him nearer. It was foolish, but pixilated from the booze, his curiosity won out. By the time he reached those dear, dead friends he was dog tired and dropped his leaden keister into Eddie’s ersatz fighting chair. It felt good. Better than the wall.

“Damn,” he said, assessing the ruined carrion. These were not the fearsome cannibals they’d been down below. This was a sad mess of humanity, retired. In death it was hard to tell male from female, black from white from Asian from whatever. One of the fractured heads looked maybe sort of Negroid. But the skin was so excavated and overcooked it stymied easy identification. It was obvious Eddie was a total racist, so did hauling in a brother bring him extra pleasure or were all zombies created equal? Dabney sniggered as he contemplated those two crazy white boys snaring undead brothers.

So stupid.

He reached out for the bottle but had left it three roofs behind.

So stupid.

He fell asleep, the hot sun baking his marinated brains.

40

“You know we’re completely nuts for having let Eddie escort Mona.”

“Mona escorted Eddie.”

“Whatever, Alan,” Ellen snapped. “Don’t nitpick. Eddie’s on a wild tear all hopped up on Mona’s mystery meds. He was trouble before, now he’s flat-out dangerous.”

Alan couldn’t argue that point. He looked out the window. It hadn’t even been an hour since they’d left to rescue Karl, but anxiety was peaking. Ellen was right and Alan cursed himself for his cowardice.

“She might be immune to those things,” Ellen said, “but she’s not immune to a Neanderthal like Tommasi. We’re idiots. And now there’s nothing we can do about it.”

She joined Alan at the window and put an arm around his waist, the first tender contact they’d shared in ages. That touch, that small embrace, rattled Alan even more than Ellen’s words. Though he made no sound, she felt something in his manner change. She looked at his face and caressed his cheek. She tilted her head back and he responded with a kiss that lasted for long, restorative minutes. For all their sexual encounters, this was the first time either of them felt real love for the other. When their lips disengaged they both stared down at the crowd below.

Within the sepulchral gloom of the bookstore, Mona slipped on her headlamp and flicked on the beam. She didn’t have another to offer Eddie, so she beckoned him to stay close, within the light, within the umbrella.

“If I find any Steinbecks I’m gonna piss on ’em,” Eddie said.

“Mm-hmm.”

Mona made a beeline for the table Karl had fallen onto, finding nothing but burnt books in his place and a couple of completely kaput zombies, their backs and limbs broken, the last vestiges of unlife gone.

“He was here,” she said, pointing.

“He ain’t here now.”

Mona looked up, aiming the light at the hole Karl had made, which was now many times larger. That explained the wrecked carcasses and the additional timber. Eddie looked up at the opening.

“That’s a big fuckin’ hole.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I’ll “Mm-hmm” you, you little bucket of fuck.

“So whatta you suggest?” Eddie said, swallowing his annoyance. “It looks like Karl might’ve got up on his own steam, no? Them zombies clean their plates, but not so’s there’s nothing left. There’d be blood or something. Bones. Something moist. Some residue.” He wiped his sweaty brow. If this Barnes & Noble had a café he wanted to check the beverage case and see if there was any bottled water left. “Hey, does bottled water go bad?”

“Dunno.”

One of these days, Mona… bang, zoom!

“Think he got up and went on home?”

“We’d have seen him.”

She had a point. It seemed unlikely that Karl would have taken a divergent path from the one he and little miss talkative just took, especially if he was all busted up. A noise came from the upper landing and Eddie looked up into the gloom at the spot where the hole was. In the murk it looked like a busted mouth, the splintery floorboards like crooked teeth.

“You heard that.” Lacking any clear inflection, it wasn’t so much a question as a statement. Eddie made a face as he considered Mona’s way of speaking might be contagious. He said it again, this time as an obvious query.

“Mm-hmm.”

Suck it up, Eddie, he cautioned himself. Just suck it up.

Without waiting for Mona he dashed up the down escalator and ran onto the mezzanine, taking care to avoid the gaping hole. The gun felt good against his thigh, heavy and reassuring. Screw Mona and her “no guns” policy. Finders, keepers. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw nothing unusual: some chairs, the upholstery cooked away, the springs and foundations jutting out, bookcases, books, books, and more books.

“Yo!” he shouted, caution to the wind. “Karl, you in here?”

A soft moan from the back of the landing.

Mona softly touched his bare shoulder and he felt a tingle from head to toe. It was the first time a woman had voluntarily made contact with him since everything went kablooey. What was harder, he wondered, his dick or the barrel of the gun, and which would do more damage if it went off? The light from Mona’s headlamp bothered Eddie’s dark-adjusted eyes and he fanned it away, frowning deeply as she stepped ahead of him. Those dead eyes of hers. Those pointy little titties. Her nipples weren’t hard but they were visible. His dick was very hard. This was fucked up. He was sweating more than the temperature warranted and again his mouth felt horrible; he could taste his breath, which was bad. He wanted some mints. His eyes darted back and forth in their sockets and he could feel his skin, like it was swarming with ants.

The moan sounded again.

“Karl!”

“Shhh,” Mona cautioned.

“Why? What’s th’ fuckin’ diff’? We’re immune, so it’s all good.” He gave his erection a firm squeeze through the coarse fabric of his pants. He was freeballing, so no underwear cushioned his jewels and scepter. He moved his hand up and down once or twice. The gun felt good. His hand felt good. His whole body felt like a cell phone on vibrate.

“We’re immune?” Mona repeated, eyeing him.

“You’re immune,” Eddie gabbled. “You are. You. We got the umbrella going on.”

Mona squinted at him in a way that made her sexier and more slappable in equal measure. The moan came again. Mona gestured for Eddie to follow her. He was sick of this follow-the-leader arrangement. He was the man. She should be following him. She should be doing a lot she wasn’t doing. Aping a yawn Eddie tossed down a couple of her purloined pharmaceuticals, smacking his lips in a gross, cartoonish manner.

“The Comet needs some water, soon.”

“Shhh.”

“Cotton mouth.”

“Shhh.”

They turned the corner and the headlamp illuminated a group of hunched over zombies polishing off Karl’s remains, his torso opened like a savaged piñata. Vibrant graffito of arterial spray decorated the bathroom wall, fresh blood pooled in all directions, and Mona had a bona fide reaction: she threw up. Sensing her presence, the zombies recoiled and retreated deeper into the men’s room, smearing blood and viscera. Mona wiped her mouth and was about to suggest escape when Eddie opened fire, blasting away huge chunks from the zombies’ tatty frames. The grisly collage of hominid stroganoff-some old, some new, some juicy, some juiceless-was an Ed Gein wet dream.

Staid Mona, momentarily wigged out by the gore-and-gun combo platter, hugged the wall behind her and clamped her eyes shut, humming to internally mute the gunfire.

“Yeah!” Eddie bellowed. “Suck on that, bitch! Suck it! Suuuuuck it!”

He stood back and pumped off another shot. He didn’t know how many were in the clip. He didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking. He was priapic in his bloodlust, engorged and fully engaged, reveling in the moment. The reports from the gun were deafening. He loved it. This was even better than flynchin’. He had to get more ammo. Didn’t matter how long it took to find some, this bitch was not going to impede his need for munitions any longer.

“Fuck yeah, baby! Fuckety fuck fuck yeeeeaaaah!”

Unnoticed by her gun-crazed companion, Mona edged away and turned the corner, hunkered down amidst scattered remainders, and clamped her hands over her ears. Eddie pulled the trigger a tenth time, enjoyed the muzzle flash and resultant damage, and found his new toy spent. Click, click, click. He looked over in the direction Mona had been to find empty wall. The fuck? Confusion followed by the incomparable sensation of jagged teeth bearing down on bare shoulder meat. His.

Eddie’s orbs met those of the zombie whose teeth were dug into his upper arm. Eddie’s deep brown and lively, his attacker’s gummous and gray. The communication between them crystalline: I am going to eat you versus oh no you aren’t.

Eddie shrugged off his assailant and brought the Smith & Wesson down on the bridge of its former nose, now just crusty cavernous slits. Bone splintered and the thing let out a low groan, but didn’t lose interest in its dinner. So much for immunity. He scanned frantically for Mona. Another zombie fell on Eddie, teeth bared, bony fingers digging into his waist, not quite breaking the skin, but near enough. Eddie batted away at both, shrieking, “Mona, help!” So much for pride.

Mona came around the corner, looking less apathetic than usual, but with her mojo intact. The zombies caught one whiff and, like skeeters from deet, fled. Eddie assayed the damage. A ring of oozing, bloody tooth holes limned his shoulder. His abdomen ached.

“You took your sweet fuckin’ time,” he growled.

He felt sickened by his girly plaint for assistance.

“I covered my ears,” Mona said. “The gunshots.”

And yet still he was hard.

“The gunshots,” he echoed. “You and guns. What’s up with that? You go out and see these fuckers every fuckin’ day an’ you go all weak at th’ knees ’cause of some loud noise? The fuck is that shit?”

Mona shrugged, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. She was gross. Like a little kid, only a little kid with womanly hips and a nice round ass.

“So I don’t know how this shit works,” Eddie said, staring at his wound. “Do I become one of those things or what? In the movies they always become one of those things. But maybe movies are bullshit.”

Mona shrugged.

“God, that pisses me off,” Eddie spat. “That little shrug of yours. You’re no mute. You can speak. So what’s with the little tics and shit? You got something to say, say it.”

“I dunno what to say.”

Eddie rubbed the damaged spot, smearing blood. He looked at his palm. It scintillated. He was sweatier than before, his face hot. Burning. Feverish. His mouth felt drier than ever. Maybe it was just adrenaline-his nerves were pretty jangly-or maybe it was the infection.

“This could’ve been prevented,” he said, more to himself than Mona. “But I blame you. You misled us. Those drugs ain’t worth shit.” He rubbed his crotch absently, inadvertently wiping blood all over it. The sweat stung his injury. “Fuckin’ drugs.” He shook his head, face pinched.

“We should go,” said Mona, her voice fainter than usual.

“I blame you.”

“Really, we should.”

“Fuckin’ drugs.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“I need a pick-me-up.”

Eddie yanked her into the bathroom and, amidst the bloody ruins that were Karl and his attackers, palmed Mona’s head down toward the sink, ripped down her pants and underwear, then spat into the cleft between her buttocks. It was then that he noticed his dick had gone soft. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” he shouted at his offending member. Mona pushed back against his arm and Eddie ground her face into the scuffed porcelain, gripping the back of her head with one hand and trying to massage vigor back into his flaccid appendage.

“You’re not goin’ anywhere,” he snarled at her. “And you,” he directed at his groin, “you better learn some fuckin’ teamwork.” He attempted to push his unit in, but it just bent away from its target, spongy as a Twinkie. “This is unreal. Un-fuckin’-real.” It always bugged Eddie when guys in porn made do with soft-ons, trying to push rope uphill. He never understood how these ingrates couldn’t get wood. Now he did and it made him angry.

He released Mona’s head from the basin but as she raised it he cautioned her with his fist. “Nowhere,” he whispered, face creased with rage. “Nowhere.” Though her back was still to him their eyes locked in the mirror. That was another thing he didn’t like about her; she barely ever blinked. She was like a cat. Or a baby. And Eddie had no fondness for either.

He tugged at the uncooperative flesh and with each stroke it seemed more willfully limp. He broke eye contact with Mona and let his focus drift down her face where it alighted on the corner of her mouth, which curled almost imperceptibly into a smirk of ridicule.

“You laughing at me?”

He pulled on his dick harder. That face of hers. That deadpan fucking face. It was almost worse when it showed a glimmer of personality. Personality that mocked him.

“You fuckin’ laughing at me?”

Maintaining eye contact she slowly shook her head, pressing herself against the pedestal and washbasin. Her fingers snailed their way along her bare upper thigh toward her underpants until they made contact and lightly curled around the elastic waistband.

“Oh no you fuckin’ don’t.”

Eddie lunged at her and she juked toward the door, unable to run with her pants half-mast. His arm shot out and grabbed her, and as he yanked the small girl toward him, he backhanded her across the face. She stumbled backward, raising her hands in self-defense. With zero mirth, Eddie laughed, the ugly sound echoing in the tile-covered tight quarters.

“That’s hilarious. Your mojo don’t work on me, toots.”

Ten minutes later, wiping his hands off on his pants, he stepped off the escalator and made for the sunny street.

The street.

The crowded street.

The street chockablock with zombies.

Oops.

He turned to fetch Mona.

More teeth on flesh.

Not immune.

Not just his shoulder.

Should’ve worn a shirt.

Bony fingers gripping.

The drugs.

Not immune.

Flesh tearing. More blood. So much blood.

Why didn’t she say something?

As he came apart Eddie whispered, “Ellen would’ve struggled.”

41

“You can’t be serious,” Ellen sputtered, following Alan past the barricaded front entrance and down into the musty basement. She was still feeling like they’d had some kind of breakthrough by the window and now here was her inamorato psyching himself up for a quixotic, most likely suicidal undertaking.

“Of course I’m serious. You think I want to be doing this? I have to. If there’s no more Mona there’s no more us. She’s our lifeline. So, I have to.”

“Can’t we give it a little more time?” Ellen pled. “It’s only been-”

“A day. A whole day. It’s like Ten Little Indians, Ellen. We’re down two men and Mona. Plus, Abe, Ruth, and who knows what became of Gerri.”

Alan placed the camping lamp on a stack of crates and looked around the room. In all the months since the pandemic began he’d been down here only once or twice. There were a couple of cage-style wire mesh lockers for tenants near the boiler, one rented by the Fogelhuts, the other unoccupied. Alan approached the Fogelhuts’ locker and gave the combination lock a yank.

“Figures,” he muttered. “I’d suggest looking for the combination in their apartment, but that could take forever.”

“I’d suggest you abandon this, period.”

He wanted to. He really did, but this was all there was to do. He wasn’t about to go to Dave or Dabney. Both were borderline basket cases these days, Dave going through cold-turkey withdrawal from both Eddie and the drugs, and Dabney recapturing the days of wine and roses. No, no outsourcing this time. Time to man up, even if he wasn’t necessarily the man he wanted to be.

Alan dug around Mr. Spiteri’s tools, which lay in a haphazard array on and about a crude wooden worktable by the stairs. There were several toolboxes, which he rummaged through until he produced a thick, heavy-gauge pipe wrench. He took several vicious whacks at the lock, the only result being the bones in his fairly delicate hands being rattled.

“See? Futile,” Ellen said, a manic smile splitting her face. “Okay, you gave it your best shot, so-”

“Not that easy,” Alan said. He fetched a thick pair of rubberized work gloves off the bench and returned to the locker, smashing not the sturdy lock, but the lightly rusted fitting through which it was looped. That broke away from the locker after ten focused whacks and with a creak, the door swung open. Alan grinned, pleased with his mettle.

“This is the worst idea, ever,” Ellen said, panic rising. “Ever.”

“You ever read Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’? If we don’t get Mona back we’re looking at the longest short winter of our lives and a very limited menu.”

Ellen rubbed her still-flat belly, absorbing Alan’s comment. “That’s in very bad taste,” she said.

“Maybe so, but this is all I can think of. It worked for Abe. How many times did Abe suggest one of us young bucks-” Alan made air-quotes “-do this? Dozens. ‘If an old fart like me could do it, what’s your excuse?’ ”

“It worked for Abe because he did it before things got so bad out there. There were countless morsels besides him for the ghouls to eat. They didn’t need to pick a well-insulated geezer.”

“I suppose.” Alan knew she was right.

“You recall anyone else trying this ploy and succeeding?” she added.

Alan couldn’t because no one had. Back in April that Venezuelan from 2B had been shamed enough by Abe to make an attempt and was devoured in plain sight within yards of the building. But he hadn’t donned Abe’s gear, assuming enough of his own would suffice. It hadn’t. Alan pulled the boxes out and ripped them open. Inside were Abe’s improvised armor: the Baby Sof’ Suit^® infant winter onesies and the XXXL pair of Bender’s Breathable Sub-zero Shield^®Sooper-System^™Weather Bibs. Leaving the bib down-as Abe has described in detail many times in the prior months-Alan began stuffing onesies down the pants, padding himself from the ankles up. When he’d reached maximum density he pulled up the bib, heaved on the matching camouflage parka, and stuffed in more onesies. With the hood of the giant parka cinched tight around a scarf and wearing a pair of snow goggles, Alan resembled a camouflaged Michelin Man.

“So,” Ellen said, a hint of worried derision in her tone, “how are you going to get upstairs now, Stay Puft?”

Alan cursed under his breath. He should have suited up in the apartment. Already he was self-basting in perspiration. With his gloved hands he gripped the railings and hauled himself up the narrow flights of stairs to 2B. By the time he reached the window with the rappelling line he was soaked with sweat.

“I think we really had a moment, there,” Ellen said.

“I know we did.”

“I think we really have something, period,” Ellen said.

“I think so, too.”

“I shouldn’t have ever busted your hump about Mona. I know you were loyal. I guess I just needed some drama to pass the time.”

Alan laughed, not with disdain. With affection.

“I deserve your mocking,” Ellen said.

“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Alan said. Shifting the scarf and balaclava and goggles he smiled at Ellen and she could see the affection, which made this so much worse.

“Can’t you wait another day? Maybe they’re all okay.”

“Ellen,” Alan said.

“Just one more day. One.”

He touched her face with the thick glove, then removed it to touch her skin to skin. Ellen kissed his hand, which was slick with sweat.

“This may be the last I get to taste you,” she said, now tearing up.

“No, it won’t. In the words of that great statesman, the Governator, ‘Ah’ll be bock.’ ”

Ellen semi-smiled, her face scrunched up, trying to hold back the tsunami of emotion.

“Okay then,” Alan said, refitting the scarf, balaclava and goggles, then gloves.

With the grace of Paul Prudhomme, he positioned himself on the windowsill-he was barely able to fit through the opening-swung his legs out, gripped the rope and lowered himself onto Dabney’s van. The zombies noticed the motion but didn’t seem overly riled. Ellen’s heart jackhammered her innards. Her ribs ached. Her eyes felt in danger of escaping their sockets, so focused were they on Alan and the horde below. She couldn’t watch. She couldn’t not watch. With a faint wave, Alan sat on the van’s roof, lowered himself to the ground and disappeared from view.

Several excruciating minutes passed and then Ellen spotted Alan’s bloated form bobbing up York toward Eighty-sixth Street. Though the zombies didn’t make way, they didn’t attack, either.

When she exhaled, it felt like the first time in her life.

It was more than weird to be out among the undead.

Though he couldn’t be certain, Alan felt as though in spite of the temperature and copious garments, he’d stopped sweating altogether. It was unlikely, but he felt a permeating chill. To combat fear he kept his thoughts clinical. He’d absorb the detail he couldn’t see from his window for future studies in watercolor and oils. Their skin was matte, but with oily patches, the pigment bleached or discolored. The white zombies were pasty yellow, the black ones gray and ashy. Even the matter underneath their shredded derma, the fasciae, peeled to reveal brown muscle tissue and dry bone. Everything looked desiccated. What you guys need is a good moisturizer, Alan thought. Some Oil of Olay or some Neutrogena. Something with a high SPF rating. I mean, look at you guys.

He focused on the path ahead. The bookstore was two and a half avenues west. Even at a snail’s pace, without realizing it, he’d already made it to First Avenue uneaten. That was good. That was very good. Were he a man of faith he’d think it miraculous.

Since the zombies hadn’t made an opening for him he was rubbing elbows with them-even the elbowless. Though there was generous padding between him and them, each contact mainlined straight to his nerve endings. Focus, he thought. Focus. He recalled self-help gurus like Tony Robbins, with their “can do” attitude and their mind-over-matter mantras. Alan had always taken those guys to be con men, though, so conjuring them didn’t help. And really, didn’t their shticks always boil down to creating wealth? Not helping. Not fucking helping.

Condensation accrued on his glasses and interior of the goggles, the top portion of his view becoming erased by fog. Great. Soon I’ll be blind. Mr. Magoo on a rescue mission. That’s genius. Something shoved Alan from behind, propelling him forward a few paces too quickly. His face contorted under its wrappings, his lips compressed between his jaws, half swallowed to stifle the shriek lodged in his throat, eyes shut, preparing for the worst. He collided with several zombies, but they responded only by growling and lightly shoving back. Am I immune? Alan wondered. All this time, maybe I could’ve gone out. Maybe I don’t even need all this gear. Yeah? Don’t get cocky, his brain chided. Good idea, brain.

The slog west was interminable. What struck Alan as odd was that down among them they didn’t smell bad at all. Maybe it was all the wadding around his nose and mouth, but they seemed virtually odorless. Did the stink rise? Were they losing their scent or was he merely desensitized? They were ghastly to behold, though, and being in their midst hammered home the improbability of their existence. How did they persist? Some were barely more than skin tarpaulins encasing collapsed innards and strings of sinew. Movement would brush his undercarriage and he’d look down only to see some half-, third- or quarter-zombie inching along the pavement like a semipulverized worm. The most natural bit of genetic programming was the survival instinct, but this was so beyond that.

The crowd seemed to swell as Alan pushed onward, the space between him and them closing, closing, closing. The material of the hunting parka, the uncounted layers of baby snowsuits, all of it, felt inadequate. The undead’s emaciated frames, their pointy shoulders-some ending there, armless-their angular hipbones, all of it scraped against the plasticized shell of his outerwear, injecting amplified echoes directly into his ear canals. His pulse thudded in his temples and he could hear his heart laboring. He fought the urge to scream. To laugh. To cough. He wanted to choke. Bile rose in his throat several times and he swallowed it back. How can they not smell me? I must reek of fear. Any second I might shit myself. Does shit sound the dinner gong? Do they still crap? Though many people did so at the moment of death, defecating seemed likely to be solely the province of the living. But these things ate living human flesh. After it went down did it just sit in their stomachs or did they expel it? Seeing them in the flesh, it was hard for Alan to imagine them digesting. They were so withered, almost mummified. Did the ones missing their gastrointestinal tract still feel the need to feed? Did they absorb nutrients? So many questions.

Alan felt like the zombie equivalent of Dian Fossey, a scientist studying a contrastive species… only dumber.

He looked down at the pavement to check for zombie scat.

Am I insane? I must be. What sane person would be out here in the first place? The padding he wore began to feel like a giant sweat diaper, because Alan felt it must be spraying off him. He stood motionless, pondering his predicament and his grip on it. His eyes focused not on what was happening beyond the the twin layer of fogged lenses, but retreated within, his focal depth confined to his own eyeballs. Things moved there: floaters. He watched the transparent blobs swim in the vitreous humor between the lens and retina.

A fly alit on his goggles, its unexpected appearance making Alan flinch. His spasm attracted some unwelcome glances and the odd hiss. Oh shit. Don’t let me get killed by a fucking fly. The insect remained on the lens, grooming or whatever it was they did when they fussed with their forelegs. Seeing was growing more difficult as the condensation crept further down the lenses. Alan’s eyes darted back and forth, making contact with dead eyes in the mob. It struck Alan that he’d portrayed something inaccurately in his zombie portraits: he’d made their eyes symmetrical, forward facing, their vision binocular. Up close he could see that in almost all of them-the ones who still had eyes-their peepers pointed in different directions, one aimed straight out, the other rolled to the side or pointed inward at the nose. Some rolled back into the socket. All glazed with death, grayed and fogged and yellowed. Flies and larvae crawled in and out of the zombies’ various orifices, their hosts organic mobile homes.

Alan’s head ached.

Maybe there was a word for what his stomach was experiencing, but probably not one in English. Maybe German. And thirty letters long.

Something gripped Alan’s ankle and panic bypassed his leg and deposited itself directly in his colon. He looked down and through the miasma saw a legless zombie with only one arm hitching a ride, its clawlike, almost fleshless hand digging splintered nails into the thick fabric of Alan’s hunting overalls. Oh fuck. Oh Jesus. Alan didn’t dare attempt to shake it off for fear betraying his humanity-his edibility. Maybe if I start moving again it’ll go away. Step after mired step the freeloader was dragged until Alan found himself stuck, unable to impel that leg forward. He looked down again, straining his eyes to fathom the hindrance. Another zombie had trodden on Alan’s passenger. Alan tried to disengage his leg from the bony hand. Nothing doing. In death-or would that be unlife-was rigor mortis the status quo? Until his hitchhiker’s hitchhiker stepped off, Alan was anchored to this spot.

Alan wished he wasn’t an atheist.

The other zombie stumbled off the back of Alan’s passenger and he moved forward, wondering how long the calf-gripping parasite would hold on.

Situated in a large apartment building, the Barnes & Noble was midway between Second and Third. It struck Alan, as he waded through the crowd, that zombies didn’t really walk. The ones that could stood upright, sort of, but they just kind of shuffled around aimlessly, their movement dictated by the group rather than the individual. They were like plants impelled to move by a breeze. The only time he saw them propel themselves with purpose was when it was feeding time. But I’m moving with purpose. Maybe because I’m moving so slowly. It had to be scent. Were there scientists anywhere working on answers? Some underground bunker somewhere? If so, was that even a comforting thought?

As he cleared the southwest corner of Second Avenue, Alan felt his passenger again snag on something; this time the sensation was accompanied by the sound of fabric tearing. Alan looked down and saw the culprit, scarcely visible through the haze: not his zombie hanger-on, but a rusty detached bumper. His guest’s detached hand, however, was still hooked onto Alan’s pants leg, the rest of the zombie lost in the profusion of spindly legs. Then Alan noticed a splotch of something pale and pinkish. Paint? Chalk? His own pale skin exposed in the perforation. Fuck. The bumper had torn it, too. He transfixed on a small blossom of red dripping down his calf.

The adjacent zombies’ postures stiffened a fraction, as did Alan’s.

Inches away, one zombie canted its head at an angle that telegraphed its intent: to begin the beguine. Fuck that. Faster than Alan would have thought possible the zombie lunged and snapped at him, burying its teeth in the outer layer of the parka, near the shoulder. The padding was thinnest there and Alan felt a pinch. Not skin breaking, but piss inducing. Alan punched his attacker hard and it fell away, leaving behind a couple of teeth.

Nonetheless, the word was out: dinner is served.

Scent.

Violent motion.

The zombie’s associates heaved toward Alan, their need raw, guileless. Alan swatted at them, punching and shouldering. They were weak but plentiful. He was practically blind, but his goal was within yards. More teeth and limbs bit, pawed, and clawed at Alan. He heard more material tearing. One arm penetrated the outer parka shell and he felt it groping at the bib of his overall. If he started hemorrhaging Baby Sof’ Suit^® infant winter onesies he’d soon graduate to plain old hemorrhaging. The image of his own entrails boiling out filled his forebrain. No, no, no! He twisted side to side and the perpetrator’s arm snapped off with a sickening pop, still twitching within Alan’s coat, its bony digits grazing his right nipple, which stiffened inappropriately. Oh god, oh god, I’m being felt up by a severed arm!

Alan drew his arms in, making himself as compact and missilelike as possible, then, bulky as he was, tore ass toward the bookstore. Skeletal hands snatched at him, as did stumps. His hood got yanked down, snapping his head back, material cinching around his throat. He gagged, but kept on. The goggles pulled sideways across his face exposing one eye, blocking the other, his glasses straining between them and his face. Terrified as he was, the sudden rush of air on his wet face felt refreshing. Don’t readjust. Keep moving. Keep moving, you fucker! Do it! No blitz, no fucking blitz! Please. He rammed forward. Another pair of rotting arms attempted to detain him. I’m not a huggy person! Get off of me! He wrenched to one side and broke away. Half blind he saw his objective loom ahead. Make way for Stay Puft!

Even if Mona’s not in there, even if they’re all perished, I’ll-Alan couldn’t think of anything encouraging. I’ll be stranded here and die. So be it. Maybe I can find some duct tape and mend the rips, provided they don’t eat me alive in there. Alan vaulted over the broken window, palmed the scarf off his muzzle and with his teeth yanked off a glove. Dexterity restored, he readjusted his now defogged glasses, fished a flashlight out and clicked it on. The zombies were right on his ass, stumbling into the confines of the store, the first wave making a nice carpet for the others to tumble over. Alan whipped the light left and right, up and down.

“Mona!” he shouted. “Mona!”

No reply.

With no other options, he bounded up the escalator and cast the beam of light in every direction, deciding on heading deep into the store. He was a goner, but why make it easy for them? Stumbling over piles of burnt books and ruined standee displays he tripped and cracked his goggles on a bookshelf. He peeled off the other glove and removed them. “Okay,” he wheezed, breathless. “Okay. Okay.” He crawled behind the bookcase and, staying on his knees, ventured deeper into the store’s second floor. He could hear the graceless footfalls and ravenous moans of his pursuers. When properly motivated, those fuckers could move.

Edging out of the aisle, his palm made contact with something moist and sticky. He aimed the beam of light at the floor, which was shellacked with a well-trodden layer of semifresh blood that led to the men’s room door.

“Oh Jesus.”

Rising, Alan looked over his shoulder and caught an eyeful of the mob. They’d reach him in moments. Ellen was right. This was a stupid idea. Foolhardy. Dumb. Not concerned with what killed cats, curiosity compelled Alan toward the john, his footsteps punctuated by the audible tackiness of the coagulating blood. Pushing open the door he saw Mona, curled in a fetal position under the sink, her pants pulled down and blood smeared across her thighs and bare ass.

“Mona! Oh my God, what happened? Mona! Mona!”

No response.

He knelt beside her and touched her throat. His pulse was racing so fast he couldn’t tell if she had one. He pressed his face to hers. It was warm. He felt gentle breath escaping her pursed lips. A huge sigh of relief escaped his own. “Mona?” he repeated a few times. Nothing. But she was alive. The sound of the mob approaching cleared his head. He stooped over and lifted her up, swallowed some deep lungfuls of air and kicked open the door to be greeted by the faces of several dozen zombies, whose greed melted to disdain as they got dosed with Mona mojo.

And with unfettered joy, Alan laughed.

Back on Eighty-sixth, with the retreating crowd creating a concentrically widening berth, Alan gently lowered Mona to the ground and removed his now-thank goodness-superfluous damaged outerwear. As the giant parka disgorged a torrent of sopping-wet baby winter onesies the zombies hung back, snarling, some rocking their heads back and forth so violently they looked in danger of snapping off.

“Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?” Alan scoffed.

Alan made his way homeward, Mona cradled in his arms. In the light of day he saw her face, neck, and shoulders were badly bruised, her cheek bore a long gash and both her lips were split. One eyelid looked puffy and discolored. After the zombies had withdrawn in the bookstore Alan noticed what was left of Karl on the bathroom floor-not even enough to reanimate. Alan didn’t bother looking for Eddie, not even for the pleasure of gloating over his corpse. Mona’s contusions and disheveled wardrobe told the story. Eddie could rot. Alan’s injuries were limited to scrapes and bruises. He sighed with relief.

At the intersection of Second Avenue and Eighty-sixth Mona’s eyes opened and, seeing Alan and the clear blue sky above, she actually smiled. It was the single most beautiful thing Alan had ever seen.

“Hey, you,” he said, trying not to mist up.

“Hey,” she replied. “You can put me down.”

“You sure? I don’t mind carrying you.”

“Who are you, Jesus?”

Though uninflected, Alan gaped at her remark.

“Was that a joke?”

“Just put me down.”

Stunned, Alan gently angled her till her feet touched the ground. She took a few moments to stretch and get her land legs, readjust her clothes, then fished a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and, with a light limp, started walking with purpose.

“What’s that?” Alan asked, keeping pace.

“The list.”

Alan was gobsmacked.

“Are you kidding?” he stammered. “After what you’ve been through? Jeez, Mona, take the day off.”

“Can’t.”

At the nearest pharmacy Mona procured mifepristone for Ellen and herself. After she passed out she had no idea how far Eddie’d gone. Though her privates were the only part of her that didn’t hurt, she wasn’t taking chances. Ellen might change her mind, but Mona didn’t want even the remotest possibility of bearing Eddie’s offspring. Alan, noting Mona’s pharmaceutical choice, kept mum. They stepped back into the daylight and walked home in silence.

With the sky whitening under the season’s first snowfall, Alan turned away from the window. Though the horde was still plentiful, their numbers were perceptibly thinning. Ellen might be right after all. Maybe it was only a matter of time. Alan sat back down at the table and contemplated his next move. Buying hotels was always risky.

“Dude,” Mona said, agitating the tiny top hat.

Alan looked at her. She, too, had changed a bit in the months since “The Karl and Eddie Incident.” She’d likely never be Miss Personality, but she’d come a long way since her debut. She managed a smile now and again and her sentences, though short, were mostly actual sentences. Ellen absently rubbed her distended belly, feeling movement within-little Alan or Michael junior. Alan hoped the latter, but only time would tell. Maybe it would be a girl. With Dave gone from a grief-inspired suicide-his evicted husk still lingered outside staring up at the building-it was down to Alan, Dabney, and the two women. Cozy. Dabney, who’d abandoned his rooftop shack in favor of more conventional digs, had lightened up on the boozing, though he still enjoyed a dram on occasion. He entered the living room opening a jar of salsa. The chips were already on the table.

He took his seat and dipped a chip.