Among the Living (5 page)

“Want me to go up there?” I’m thinking about how ridiculous I will look when I flash my press pass for the tiny newspaper I work for. Wonder how hard they will laugh when I bust out some hard-hitting questions like ‘What are you covering up?’

“Nah, just call around, hit up some friends. Don’t you have a buddy who used to be a cop?”

“He’s still a cop. Works for Bellevue, so he probably won’t know anything.”

“I bet you can find out stuff. You’re good at that; hit up Google and see what kind of crazy rumors you can turn up.”

“You’re the chief, err, chief.”

* * *

I’m back at my desk when my cell rings again. It’s Rita, but I ignore it and go back to scouring the web. Sure I can call on friends and old associates to see if I can get a lead, but Jim is right: nowadays all the action is on Google.

The only problem is that reports are weird. A man claims he was chased into his house near Queary Park by a guy with red eyes and gray skin. He said he looked like a corpse and smelled worse. I discount it immediately; the neighborhood borders Fremont, and I know how those guys like to party. In fact, every year there is a naked parade through town that makes the conservatives nuts.

I back my browser up a couple of pages so I can read that message board again. It’s devoted to sushi shops in Seattle, but the guy seems like a regular poster. The only problem is that I can’t find it now. Their message board must have gone down. I go to offline mode and grab the story out of my browser’s cache. Once it is on the screen, I hit print and grab the warm copy off my little desktop inkjet printer.

“What is this?” Erin asks when I show her the copy.

“Can you check that link? I’m having trouble finding it again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it won’t come up. I did variations of the same search with no luck. I grabbed the old link from my history, but it gave me a 404 error.” 404 is the universal ‘screw you’ that web pages display when they don’t exist anymore.

She spins around and stabs at her keyboard with lacquered nails that clatter across the keys like plastic dominoes falling on a card table.

“Rita keeps calling me,” I say quietly. I don’t even know why I utter the words. Erin pauses but doesn’t turn around.

“How is she?”

“The usual. Delusional, drunk, probably on enough pills to choke a horse.”

“Mike, you need to leave her alone. You divorced her years ago, but you pander to her needs every day, and you hate yourself for it. Don’t you want a normal life?” Same old conversation, same old Erin, and sadly … same old me.

She isn’t the only one. I have heard it a hundred times from a hundred different people. Even the big guy on TV who dispenses advice would say the same, and still I know I can’t leave Rita alone. She needs me. She needed me then, before Andy, and she needs me now more than ever.

Erin turns around and hands me the paper. “Nothing, dead link.” Her eyes study mine, and suddenly I feel shy under her gaze. We have been co-workers for a year, and I won’t say that I haven’t had feelings for her. But she is smart, beautiful, and young, too young to get mixed up with me.

I take the paper from her, and our hands brush each other. Her fingers are soft and warm as they trail across the back of mine, sending a shiver up my spine.

“Thanks for checking.”

She doesn’t say a word. She just stares at me, and I can feel the pity radiating from her like a furnace.

“No problem.” Again I feel like something passed between us, as if I missed an important moment. I know I should ask her what’s on her mind, but I don’t have the guts, not today.

There is a picture on my desk of me, Rita, and a very young, very toothless Andy. He was at that age where he seemed to be missing teeth like lost toys. He was smiling, a big cheesy grin that surely came from my side of the family. Rita was radiant in a white dress, shoulder straps hanging over her pale but shapely frame. I’m behind them, arms draped around both. This picture is from a trip to Florida to see the big mouse. It was one of the best weeks of my life. I miss them, both of them, and I don’t know how to get over them.

I throw myself back at the computer and widen my search to blogs. That’s when I hit the jackpot.

A guy who calls himself SilverSurfer57 writes:

It’s a cover-up, folks; I can confirm this for at least as long as this blog stays active. I’m guessing that the guys in suits have some sort of program scouring the web for certain words, so I’m going to keep this as generic as I can.

There is some crazy shit going down in my neighborhood, which is in the Emerald City. This neighborhood is not for kings, and it was the other sister. Okay, enough hints?

It’s a pretty clever reference to Queen Anne.

I have been holed up in my basement (hold the laughter, assholes) for a day and a night. I locked the doors but cops and soldiers have been by several time. They walked all over my property and smashed my wife’s flowers. Bastards. I don’t know what they are looking for but I did see them rounding up some sick looking people.

I don’t know what the sick guys have but it’s bad enough so that now they have the CDC fuckers in town and they are dressed in white suits that zip all the way up to their masks. I think you know what I am talking about here, folks. Who didn’t see that Dustin Hoffman flick Outbreak? So what is it exactly? I’m guessing it’s bird based, are you catching my drift here, folks? Get it, drift?

“Fuck me!” I exclaim as I collapse back into my chair. It rolls back a foot and comes to a stop.

“Smooth talker,” Erin calls over her shoulder.

I turn and look at her; she has her back to me, so I whisper.

“Erin, can you help me with something?”

She rolls back and gives me a serious stare. “Yes, Agent Pierce?”

I roll my eyes. Our heads are close together, but our backs are still to each other. I can smell her scent again, clean, fresh, like she just showered. I have never known her to wear a hint of perfume, for which my allergies are eternally grateful.

“If the bird flu hit the U.S., what do you think the government would do?”

She spins around and stares at me. “I hope you aren’t suggesting ...”

“I don’t know what I’m suggesting. I hope I don’t.”

“Well, I think they would go on TV and have the Centers for Disease Control make some statements about safety, what to avoid, what to do, word on vaccines—I think they have some sort of vaccine for that stuff now, don’t they?”

“But what if they don’t and it hit a certain community hard, so hard that they had to lock it down, make up some bullshit story about a gas leak. Are you with me here?” My eyebrows are arched, and I think my voice may have a hint of hysteria to it, because her eyes have gone wide, but I can’t read her look. It may just be pity since she knows what today is to me.

“Mike, you can’t be serious.”

“I don’t know. I was just reading a blog; this guy is hiding out in Queen Anne and writing about people in white suits collecting sick people. The big CDC suits that cover them from head to toe with gas masks, the works.”

“A blog? Oh Jesus, Mike, I thought you were onto something there.”

“What about the site that worked a few minutes ago but now is down? Isn’t that weird?”

“Right. Websites never go down.”

I sit back, turn around to face the computer and look at the blog again, then I burst out laughing. She is right. What am I getting so worked up about? I’m not some ace reporter in a book who discovers something the rest of the American public has missed. It’s absurd, but I know what it stems from. I don’t want to think about today’s date.

I look over my shoulder at Erin, and she is smiling at me with her arms crossed.

“You’re right, it’s silly. I’m just a little … off today.”

“Off your rocker, maybe.”

“Would you have me any other way?”

“I would take you that way … any way for that matter,” and then she winks, which makes me blush until I turn around and try to concentrate on work.

I wish I were a drinking man so I could have a liquid lunch.

* * *

Noon rolls around. I have poked and prodded the web, contacted friends, and finally called my buddy who is a cop. Dale sounded distracted; he has been on the force in Bellevue for a couple of years. When I asked him about the excitement in Seattle, he blew it off, claiming it was way out of his area. I asked him if he’d heard any rumors, and he replied with a curt “no” and said he had to go because he was on duty. We have chatted while he was on duty before, but he sounded harried today. Maybe he was about to pull someone over.

I head out to a local deli to grab a bite to eat. The wind whips my shirt around my back as I step out of the small office space on Denny Avenue. It is colder than usual, and I’m betting rain. It’s a pretty safe gamble in Seattle. Some kids light off fireworks, and I jump at the sound of firecrackers in an alley. It sounded like gunfire for a moment, and all the paranoia of the morning has set me on edge. Last night was bad enough, and it is still a day before the fourth. Kids were blowing stuff up for hours as I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep around 1:00 a.m.

I usually go out to lunch with Bob in advertising, but today he brought something to eat. I didn’t bother with Jim, because he was busy screaming into the phone at a vendor that screwed up an order of paper. Erin broke out a huge salad before I could ask her if she wanted to grab a bite to eat.

So I venture out alone and walk the warm three blocks to the deli. Lou isn’t behind the counter, but his wife is. She is a tall Korean woman who smiles all the time and is in the habit of experimenting with new meals to unleash on her regulars. She once made a batch of coleslaw with kimchi in it, only she didn’t tell me about the hot stuff. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right in the tiny store. She laughed so hard that my tears of pain turned into tears of laughter for her.

I order a turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich and wait with a couple of other guys. We all stand around trying to look interested in the candy bars and bags of chips so we don’t have to look at or talk to each other. I wander over to the news rack and scour the front page for any weird stories, but it is the usual bad news about the economy. I must be a sight, a newsman reading a rival newspaper. Except that they aren’t even a rival. They could swallow our little rag with barely a burp of indigestion.

I move to the window while the woman works on three orders as fast as she can. She tends to be a perfectionist, which is fine with me. All I have to go back to is a stuffy room with buzzing computers.

A couple wanders past the deli hand in hand, but they don’t look very happy. The man keeps glancing behind him as if being followed. I move to the corner and try to peer around it, but I don’t see anything except cars rushing by. Then the couple is past the window. I watch them and it dawns on me, the weird feeling I have had all day. It’s like a sense of dread hangs over the city, like it is waiting for something to happen.

I hope it’s just my nerves.

The smell of gunpowder hangs in the air and then is whisked away by a breeze. Marlene stares on. Lester raises the gun and pulls the trigger again like another bullet will make a difference after the three that are already in the deader’s neck and face. There is no boom, and he remembers that he is dry. Angela grabs his arm and pulls him back. She shivers and makes an attempt to cover herself with the ripped fabric of her dress. She pulls him back to the porch, where they collapse into their respective seats. Lester sighs, and then the shakes start for real.

“Oh shit.” His voice is harsh from yelling at the corpse. “That was sick.”

“God, he just came right over the fence. Do you think he’s dead?”

“Oh yeah, he’s dead all right. I just put a shitload of lead into his body.”

Angela sobs once, stares down at her torn dress, at her breasts, which she covers with one arm. She lifts her other hand to tug at the fabric, then drops it and breaks out in tears.

“Ah come on, babe. Let’s get you some new clothes, then we’ll smoke a bowl and things will be different.”

“What about the deaders? If we go inside, we won’t know if they get into the yard or not.”

“The only reason he made it over the fence is because he saw us. If we go inside, they won’t have any reason to get in.”

“Oh.”

She follows him into the small house, which is stifling. She stares out the window, her torn dress clutched in one hand. She smells faintly of sweat and whatever cream she puts on her soft skin. He moves behind her and runs his hands along her arms.

“She’s leaving,” she mumbles.

“Marlene?”

“No, my gay sister Frieda. Of course Marlene. She watched the house for a minute, and then she just walked off like she had a hot date.”

“Maybe she’s meeting another deader for drinks.” Lester tries to find humor in his own joke.

She watches the window for another moment, curtain pulled to the right, but gives up on this fairly quickly and plops down on the couch. Angela opens the new purse after wiping at the bloodstains with a tissue for a few seconds. She pulls out Marlene’s wallet and flips through the contents. Checking out her friend’s ID, she clucks at the picture.