Asylum (3 page)

Jimmy didn’t say anything, and his eyes
didn’t regain their focus, but he did take the bottle and drain
it.

“
I’m the owner of this
club,” the drag queen said, holding out a rather large hand to
Curtis. “They called me Madam Diva.”

“
I’m Curtis, and my friend
is Jimmy.”

“
I’m Clive,” the blonde
said, and his lover said, “Toby.”

The middle-aged fag and his hag introduced
themselves as Lance and Autumn, and Devon threw his name in for
good measure. The stripper was the last to speak.

“
I’m Jarvis,” he said with
a lilting British accent. Curtis couldn’t help but notice that the
man’s nipples were erect.

“
I wonder what’s keeping
Gil,” Madam Diva said, but she made no move to go toward the door
through which the bartender had exited.

“
How many of them are
they?” Autumn asked. “I mean, there are quite a few of us. Maybe we
can make it to our cars and get the hell out of here.”

Curtis shrugged. “I don’t know, I didn’t
exactly take the time to count, but I think there were at least
twenty of them that I saw.”

“
Sounds like it’s the same
all over,” Toby said. “At least according to what the 911 operator
told me. Diva, do you have a radio in here anywhere?”

She shook her head.

Lance ran a hand over his balding scalp and
sighed. “What could it be? Gangs?”

Devon snorted a laugh. “This isn’t New York,
for crying out loud. This area isn’t exactly a hotbed of gang
activity.”

“
Well, then what the hell
do you think it is?” Autumn snapped, coming to her fag’s defense
like a devoted hag.

Devon opened his mouth to respond but then
the back door banged open and Gil burst in, slamming the door
behind him. He’d lost his bat, as well as half his shirt. It had
been ripped down the front, and what looked like claw marks ran
down his chest, blood pooling in his gray chest hair. His hair had
come loose from the ponytail, and he was panting like an
asthmatic.

“
Gil, what’s wrong?” Diva
said, hurrying to the bartender.

“
Get this door
locked.”

“
But what happened? What
did you see?”

“
Get this door locked
NOW!” Gil shouted. Diva didn’t ask anymore questions. She reached
down into her cleavage and pulled out a key dangling from a chain
around her neck. She quickly locked the door and followed Gil back
to the group across the club.

The bartender ignored the questions being
thrown at him and went straight to the bar. He poured two shots of
Tequila, downed them, seemed to consider it for a moment then
poured himself a third. The alcohol appeared to calm him, his
tremors gradually subsiding. He rubbed absently at the scratches on
his on his chest, his hand coming away bloodied.

“
Gil,” Jarvis said,
reaching out and placing a hand on the bartender’s shoulder, “what
happened out there?”

“
I climbed up on one of
the picnic tables and looked over the wall, but I couldn’t see
anything. I could hear a lot of commotion around the front of the
club, but I couldn’t see anyone. So I climbed over.”

Gil had dropped to the ground, his knees protesting
as they absorbed most of the impact. The bartender was nearing
sixty; he’d been alive for both the Stonewall Riots and Woodstock.
He’d marched on Washington and endured bigotry in every form it
could take. He had stood behind the bar at Asylum and watched all
these young gay men parade by, spoiled and disrespectful, content
with their cushy place in the world, the new rights they had in
society, unappreciative of all that men like Gil had done to make
those rights possible.

Not that the world had been rid of prejudice
and discrimination. There were still hurdles to be jumped,
obstacles to be overcome, and the occasional violent bastards out
to shed some blood. Gil had assumed that was what he was up against
tonight, a group of bigoted rednecks staging some
Assault on
Precinct 13
attack on the club. The kind of people who brought
“GOD HATES FAGS” signs to funerals. He had dealt with their kind
before.

When Gil had rounded the corner, his first
thought was that the kid’s estimate had been conservative. The
parking lot was teeming with people. Some wandered the lot
aimlessly, as if they were lost, but most had bottlenecked in the
hallway of the club, packed in there and pushing forward. The ones
up front by the entrance had to have been getting crushed. Gil was
surprised that the sheer weight of their numbers hadn’t busted down
the door. For that matter, he would have expected that by now
someone would have found the toggle switch and unlocked the
door.

Gil was preparing to head back to the
patio—there were far too many for Gil and his trusty bat to handle
alone—when he glanced out at the lot and saw the body. It was lying
by a Mustang, intestines trailing from a gaping wound in the
stomach, its head split open like a coconut. So the kid hadn’t been
lying, these sons-of-bitches really had killed someone. Gil felt
rage burning inside him and his grip on the bat tightened. He
remembered his days as a member of the organization ACT UP, their
slogan being, “Gays Bash Back.” Here it was the twenty-first
century, and gays were still facing discrimination and
violence.

Gil blinked when he thought he saw the
body’s fingers twitch. He squinted through the darkness, sure he
must have imagined it. His eyes—like the rest of him—weren’t as
young as they used to be, and they sometimes played tricks on him
like a couple of rambunctious five-year-olds. He had almost
convinced himself that he hadn’t seen what he thought he’d seen
when it happened again. The fingers on the right hand were
definitely moving, wagging back and forth as if waving at someone.
Could the poor bastard still be alive? Even with his skull cracked
open and his insides scattered around like discarded party favors
the day after New Years’ Eve?

The body suddenly sat upright, like a puppet
on a string, eliciting a quiet gasp from Gil. Even in the darkness
and from this distance, Gil could see the man’s brains peeking out
from the gash in the back of his head, and as he stood, more of his
intestines hit the ground with a wet sound that made Gil want to
gag. The man started shuffling toward the group that was trying to
cram itself into the club, his feet sliding along in the gravel. As
he walked, he reached into the cavity of his stomach, pulled out
something that might have been his diaphragm, and started absently
chewing on it.

Gil—who had seen a lot in his time,
including some truly inhuman atrocities witness during his stint in
Vietnam—turned away and vomited on his shoes. A warm gush of
undigested food and stomach acid poured from his mouth to splatter
on the ground. It seemed to go on for a long time, as if he were
throwing up everything he’d eaten in the past fifty-nine years.
Even when he was done, he continued to retch and dry-heave. It was
like he thought he could vomit up the memory of what he’d seen,
somehow expunge it from his mind via his mouth. He reached out and
placed a hand on the wall of the club to steady himself, gasping
for his breath.

He was so distracted that he didn’t hear
them approaching until it was almost too late.

“
How’d you get away?”
Curtis asked.

“
Had to fight my way out.
I bashed at them with the bat until one of ‘em got lucky and
snatched it out of my hands. The one guy clawed at my chest, like
he was trying to dig right through the skin to get to the heart or
something. I thought they had me at the wall, but I managed to get
back over and inside just in time.”

Curtis could hear them beating at the back
door now as well as the front. Bombarded on both sides. Apparently
while the undead couldn’t figure out to unlock a door, they had no
trouble climbing over the walls of the patio.

“
What did they look like?”
Toby asked.

Curtis and Gil exchanged a glance, and
Curtis could see the doubt in the older man’s eyes. Silently,
Curtis tried to convey with his expression that Gil wasn’t crazy,
that he really had seen what he thought he’d seen. It was important
that it be said, but Curtis didn’t want to have to be the one to
say it.

“
They’re dead,” Gil said,
his voice low but firm.

“
You killed some of them?”
Autumn asked. “Are you sure?”

“
No,
I
didn’t kill
them, but they’re dead. All of ‘em.”

Lance laughed, the sound uneasy but also
with a mean edge. “Well, they certainly don’t
sound
dead.”

Lance looked as if he was going to say more,
but Gil silenced him with a look. “I know what I saw, and those
things out there are not living. Hell, half of ‘em are decomposing
on their feet.”

“
Gil, honey,” Diva said in
the falsely soothing tones of a mother humoring her child, “you’re
all shook up, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“
No, he’s right.” Curtis
was surprised to hear his own voice sounding so loud and full of
conviction. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he felt himself
withering under the scrutiny. Forcing himself not to cower before
their gazes, he took a deep breath and said, “I know it sounds
insane, but I think we’re dealing with a bunch of…”

“
Zombies!” Jimmy blurted,
following the exclamation with a wild cackling laugh. There was
madness in the sound, and it didn’t help Curtis’s cause.

“
That’s fucking nuts,”
Devon said. “There are no such things as zombies. This isn’t a
George Romero film; this is real life.”

Gil turned on the man. “I know what I know.
And if you don’t believe me, feel free to take a step outside and
judge for yourself.”

Clive turned toward Jarvis and asked the
stripper, “Is such a thing possible?”

“
Why the hell are you
asking me?”

“
Oh, well, I just thought
that…”

“
What? That because I’m
black and have dreads, I must know all about voodoo and the
like?”

Clive blushed so deeply that his face looked
like a plum. He mumbled an apology and averted his eyes from the
stripper.

“
Are there any other ways
into this club?” Curtis asked. The pounding on both doors was so
constant that it was starting to become background
noise.

Diva reached up and scratched her head, and
Curtis noticed that the wig of curly red locks tilted slightly,
revealing her true hairline underneath. “Well, there are some
windows in the restrooms, but I don’t think anyone could fit
through them.”

Curtis nodded. He remembered from his
ill-fated visit to the restroom earlier that there were a few long,
skinny windows laid out horizontally high up on the wall near the
ceiling. Diva was right, it would take someone without any bones in
their body to fit through those things.

“
I suggest we barricade
these doors,” Gil said, his panic from earlier completely
dissipated now, replaced by a clear and calm take-charge
attitude.

“
Do you really think
that’s necessary?” Lance asked.

“
Look, whether you believe
we’re dealing with zombies or not, there are at least a hundred
bodies out there trying to get in here. These doors are sturdy, but
they’re not sturdy enough to withstand that kind of attack for a
long period of time.”

“
I’m going to call 911
again,” Toby said, pulling his phone back out.

Gil smirked. “You do that. Now does anyone
want to help me do something useful?”

“
I will,” Curtis said. He
had seen those things firsthand, and he was determined to keep them
out of the club.

Jarvis stepped forward. “Me, too. I’m not
sure I completely believe there are zombies on the other side of
those doors, but whatever they are, they obviously don’t want to
sell us Girl Scout cookies.”

Diva turned to Devon and said, “Run back
upstairs and get the lights on.”

Devon nodded and hurried back to the second
floor without a word. It was only then that Curtis noticed that the
strobe lights were still flashing on the dance floor, looking like
heat lightning inside the club. Within a minute, the dark club was
filled with an abundance of light, banishing all shadows. Curtis
blinked and squinted until his eyes adjusted to the brightness.

“
Come on,” Gil said,
walking over to the air hockey game. “Let’s move this over in front
of the door by the restrooms.”

Clive came over to help, and each of the
four men took one of the corners. It was heavier than Curtis had
expected, but they managed to get it across the floor and wedge it
up against the door, turning it on its side so that it blocked the
entire doorway.

“
I wish we could get one
of the pool tables, but I doubt we’d be able to lug it down those
narrow steps.”

“
What about the back
entrance?” Curtis asked.

“
We’ll get some of the
tables and make a barrier.”

“
I can’t get through,”
Toby said, coming back around the bar. There were tears in his
eyes. “I keep trying 911, and all I get is a busy
signal.”

After they barricaded the back entrance with
several tables and chairs, Jarvis sat down at the bar and tried to
avoid looking at the wide variety of bottles on the other side. He
was approaching six months of sobriety, and every day was a
struggle. On even the best of days, he felt that nagging itch that
only booze could scratch, but in a stressful situation like this,
the alcohol was practically calling out his name. They were old
friends, after all. He and booze had first hooked up when Jarvis
was fourteen, and by the time he was twenty-one, they’d entered
into a torrid love affair. An affair that was passionate but
ultimately destructive. Jarvis had lost his friends, his job, his
lover. He’d sacrificed it all for the drink.