Asylum (2 page)

Curtis didn’t have time to think. He simply
reacted. He snagged Jimmy by the back of the fur coat and started
dragging him toward the club. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw
that the parking lot was becoming overrun with these—

Zombies, say it! It’s crazy and impossible
but it doesn’t change what you know. They’re zombies!

—
whatever the hell they
were. Curtis could feel the same kind of hysteria that had gripped
Jimmy threatening to sink its claws into him as well, but he didn’t
have the luxury of indulging it. He pulled Jimmy back to Asylum’s
entrance, a set of glass doors that opened onto a short hallway.
They pushed through and Curtis turned to see if there was a way he
could lock the door, but the lock required a key. He considered
briefly finding something with which to barricade the door, yet a
glance through the glass showed that two of the
(zombies)
were almost upon them.

At the far end of the hallway was a booth
where a large drag queen had taken the cover charge, checked IDs,
and stamped the hands of the underage partiers. At this hour, it
was unmanned, no new patrons expected. There was a closed door here
that led into the heart of the club,from where overly loud dance
music thundered. Curtis grabbed the doorknob but it wouldn’t budge.
Jimmy was huddled by the booth, still repeating his mantra, being
no help. Curtis was beginning to get frantic, tugging at the knob
as if he could wrench the door right off its hinges.

He heard the glass doors at the other end of
the hallway swing open and risked a quick glance over his shoulder
to witness a sea of shambling bodies pouring in. The putrid odor of
rot and decay followed them inside. Curtis faced the door, kicking
at it, realizing that the few still inside the club would never
hear him above the music. He continued to kick anyway, yelling for
someone to open up, wishing the attendant were here to let him
in—

It hit Curtis like a cartoon anvil to the
head. How could he have been so stupid? The door could be opened
from inside the club like normal, but outside, it could only be
opened if the attendant hit a switch inside the booth. That would
unlock the door for five seconds, long enough for a paying customer
to slip inside.

Curtis turned to Jimmy, about to ask him to
reach behind the counter and hit the switch, but he saw the
emptiness in Jimmy’s eyes and knew his friend had temporarily
checked out. The
(zombies)
were halfway down the hall; they
were moving slowly but the hallway wasn’t very long. Curtis rushed
to the booth and leaned over the counter, feeling along the wall
underneath until he found a toggle switch. He flicked it and heard
the door’s lock unlatch behind him. Grabbing Jimmy’s clammy hand,
Curtis grabbed the knob and jerked the door open before it locked
back. The music, muffled while the door had been closed, burst out
at them like an atomic explosion of sound, assaulting them with
teeth-rattling bass. Curtis shoved Jimmy inside and followed behind
him, turning and pulling the door closed just as the first of the
(zombies)
reached the doorway. The lock clicked into place,
sealing them out. While the music drowned all other noise, Curtis
could
feel
them beating on the door from the other side. He
hoped they wouldn’t be able to figure out how to work the
switch.

Curtis turned and scanned the club. It was
dark, only a few blue bulbs and some strobe lights over the dance
floor alleviating the gloom. Immediately to his right was an alcove
that led to the restrooms and next to it a staircase that rose to
an upstairs area with pool tables, couches, and a balcony that
overlooked the dance floor. Just past the restrooms and staircase
was the bar, which ran straight down then turned to the right to
create an L shape. On Curtis’s left were a few tables and chairs
and an air hockey game. Around the other side of the bar was the
small dance floor, with mirrors enclosing it on three sides.

He saw only seven other people in the club.
Behind the bar was the bartender, a gruff older man with long gray
hair pulled back in a ponytail and a tattoo of the Tasmanian Devil
on his left bicep, and the drag queen in the sequined ball gown
that had been working the booth earlier. Sitting together at the
bar was a middle-aged gay man and an overweight woman. His “fag
hag,” was what Jimmy had called the woman earlier. A few stools
down from them was the young black stripper, still wearing only a
small thong that was nothing more than a pouch in the front and a
string up the crack of his ass. This Jimmy had referred to as a
“banana hammock.” Even in this situation, Curtis found his eyes
lingering over the muscular, smooth body before moving on. On the
dance floor was a gay couple—one a tall, thin man with wispy blonde
hair, the other short and stocky with reddish-brown hair and a
devilish goatee—dancing energetically to some strange techno remix
of “Stand By Your Man.” No one seemed to have noticed he and
Jimmy’s arrival.

Curtis hesitated to leave the door,
harboring the irrational belief that it was his presence alone
keeping those things
(zombies)
from bursting through. Jimmy
had slid down the wall by the restrooms and was crying and mumbling
to himself. Leaving him there for the moment, Curtis hurried to the
bar, slapping his palms down on the scuffed surface. The drag queen
sauntered over, cocked a hand on her hip and said, “What can I get
ya?” She had to practically scream to be heard above the
unreasonably loud music.

“
We need to call the
police,” Curtis said, straining to be heard. “And is there a back
way into this place?”

The drag queen leaned over the bar. “What
was that, honey?”

“
We need to call the
police!”

She just frowned and shook her head.
Turning, she yelled toward the upstairs area, her voice a deep
bellow, “Devon, I need you to turn the goddamn music off.”

Abruptly, silence filled the club. It was
such a shock to the system that it was like going deaf. The couple
on the dance floor continued gyrating for a moment more, but when
they realized they’d lost their accompaniment, they groaned and one
of them called out, “What’s the deal, Madam?”

“
Sorry, honey,” the drag
queen said, turning back to Curtis. “Now what’s got you all in a
tizzy?”

“
We need to call the
police and barricade ourselves inside the club until they get
here.”

This got the bartender’s attention. He fixed
his steely gaze on Curtis and said, “What the fuck you talking
about, boy?”

Curtis glanced back at the door. Now that
the music was off, the pounding could be heard as the door rattled
in its frame. Jimmy was still huddled on the floor, fingers stuck
in each ear in a childish gesture, while he rocked back and forth
and continued to mutter unintelligibly.

“
What’s going on?” the
drag queen said with an edge of concern in her voice. “What kind of
trouble you boys in?”

“
We’re
all
in
trouble. There are these—”

zombies

“—
crazy people outside.
They killed a guy and attacked me and my friend. Someone needs to
call the police right away, and we need to make sure they can’t get
in here.”

The other patrons in the bar—the couple from
the dance floor, the man and his fag hag, the stripper—were
gathering around. An older man with a receding hairline and a
thick, bushy mustache straight out of a 70s porno came walking down
the stairs; undoubtedly the Devon who had shut down the music.

The bartender pushed past the drag queen,
planting his beefy hands on the bar and looking at Curtis as if he
could chew him up and spit him out. “Boy, if this is some kind of
joke, I’m gonna pound your ass into the ground.”

“
This is no joke. A man is
dead out in your parking lot, and we need to get the police out
here as soon as possible.”

The bartender reached down under the bar and
came up with an aluminum baseball bat. “Let’s just see what the
fuck is going on out there.”

“
Mister, are you crazy?
Didn’t you just hear what I said? There are like two dozen crazy
people out there, someone has already been murdered. You can’t
handle that mob on your own.”

“
I can take care of
myself, boy.”

The drag queen reached out and put a hand on
the bartender’s arm as she cast an uneasy eye toward the door. The
pounding was getting louder, punctuated by scratching and keening
wails. “Gil, maybe you shouldn’t.”

The bartender shrugged off the drag queen’s
hand and came out from behind the bar, the bat propped on his
shoulder. He was large, made more of muscle than of flab, and he
walked briskly toward the door. “I ain’t gonna be scared off by no
bunch of asshole Neanderthals who think us faggots won’t fight
back.”

Curtis watched the man go, wanting to stop
him, to tell him what was waiting on the other side of that door,
but he found his vocal chords frozen. He couldn’t bring himself to
say the word—
zombies
—and he knew he wouldn’t be believed
even if he did manage to get it out.

The drag queen turned toward Devon and said,
“Hurry back upstairs and call the police.”

“
What’s going
on?”

“
Just do it, Devon. And
hurry.”

Devon disappeared back up the stairs as Gil
reached the door. He grabbed the doorknob but then Jimmy suddenly
attacked the man. He snatched him by the ponytail and pulled hard,
yanking the man’s head back and causing him to curse and drop the
bat. “NO!” Jimmy yelled, getting the bartender in a headlock and
trying to drag him away from the door. “Don’t let those things in
here! They’ll kill us all! Don’t let them in!”

The couple from the dance floor huddled
close, their arms wrapped around each other’s waists. The fag and
his hag backed away from Curtis, as if he carried some communicable
disease. The stripper stayed on his stool, his face unreadable in
the darkness of the club. The drag queen looked on with her mouth
agape, watching Jimmy jump on Gil’s back and ride him like a
bronco.

“
Get the fuck off me,
kid,” Gil said and then shrugged Jimmy away as simply as he might
have brushed off a half-hearted insult. Jimmy landed on one of the
tabletops and slid off onto the floor, one of the chairs clattering
on top of him. Gil retrieved his bat and stared down at Jimmy for a
moment as if he wanted to bash his skull in.

“
Phones ain’t working,”
Devon said, hurrying back down the stairs. “The line’s
dead.”

“
I’ll use my cell,” the
stocky redhead said, pulling out a compact phone and punching in
911, turning away from the group.

Gil started back for the door but Curtis
jumped in front of him, holding his hands out. “Please, Mister, I’m
not joking. There is some bad shit going on out there. Some crazy
shit. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so you’re just going
to have to trust me. You
do not
want to go out there.”

The bartender stood motionless for a moment,
his eyes squinted at Curtis. Then he turned his eyes back to the
door. The pounding continued unabated, and the doorknob was
twisting back and forth as someone tried to open the door. Curtis
found himself saying a silent prayer that the lock was sturdy
enough to keep out a horde of—

zombies

“
Something weird is going
on,” the redhead said, snapping his cell shut. “The 911 operator
said to sit tight but she couldn’t guarantee getting a unit out
here anytime soon.”

“’
Course not,” the
bartender said with a sneer. “Why should the authorities give a
shit that a bunch of fags are being attacked?”

“
Uhm, no, she said that
they were being inundated with calls from all over the city of
people being attacked by mobs. She said she’s even had calls
claiming the attackers are cannibalizing their victims.”

Without a word, Gil turned away from Curtis
and started walking down the bar, heading toward the dance floor.
“Gil, where are you going?” the drag queen asked, a hand clutched
to some fairly authentic looking cleavage.

“
I’m just gonna go out on
the back patio and look over the wall, see what I can
see.”

At one point during the night, Curtis had
fought his way through the dance floor and gone out on the patio.
It was a small area with a few picnic tables and ashtrays for the
smokers, enclosed by a seven-foot high brick wall, open to the
stars above. Curtis had found it as cramped as the dance floor and
had stayed only a moment.

“
Be careful,” the drag
queen called out, but Gil ignored her, not even glancing back as he
opened the door and stepped outside. The door swung shut and
latched behind him.

“
Does that door lock
automatically when it’s closed?” Curtis asked, walking over to
Jimmy and helping his friend to his feet.

The drag queen shook her head.

“
Is there a way to lock
it?”

“
Yeah, I have a key for
it. Is there really a dead man out there?”

Curtis righted the chair that had toppled
over and helped Jimmy into it. His friend’s eyes were still vacant,
staring off into an unfathomable distance. “Yes, they ripped his
guts out.”

The hag groaned and covered her face with
her hands.

The tall blonde from the dance floor stepped
forward and said, “Did you know him?”

“
No, not exactly. He
was…well, an acquaintance, I guess you’d say, of my friend here.
They pulled him right out of his car and killed him.”

“
Oh, you poor dears,” the
drag queen said, coming out from around the bar and placing a beer
in front of Jimmy. “Here, I think you could use this.”