Fiend (12 page)

It’s obvious Jared is one of those annoying tweakers who can’t stop his stupid mouth from flapping when he’s spun. He also pulls out his pistol at every swaying branch. I tell him to shut the fuck up.

He doesn’t. He’s all, I’m extremely excited about all of this. It’s not unlike make-believe. Cops and robbers. Indians and cowboys. Marines and aliens. God, that’s totally what it is. Am I right or am I right?

I try to ignore him.

Jared drops his voice all movie trailer–like. He says, They survived the apocalypse, and awoke to a foreign world. Five of them total. The Albino, Typewriter, KK, the Ex, and …

He stops, probably realizing he’d just typecast me as the ex.

Sorry, he says, then continues with his fake voice, The only thing that kept them alive was Tina, her touch sometimes loving, sometimes gentle.…

I run my hand along the chain-link fence enclosing the
Albino’s compound. We’ve been walking for a half hour and there’s still a third to go. I’ve marked one section so far that’s in need of repair. I hope the Albino has some extra fencing. I figure he probably does, because he’s
that
guy, the one who’s thought people were coming to slit his throat since he was old enough to crawl.

Jared’s still blabbering: And lurking behind every tree, the Chucks crouched giggling and licking their lips, waiting for night to fall.…

I wonder if the fence will do a damn thing. Probably not. It’s about five feet tall, staked every few yards. I remember the little girl with the umbrella socks. How easily she bashed through Typewriter’s door. But what else are we going to do? Sit in the shack and wait for them to beat their decaying fists through century-old cedar? Maybe it’s just the feeling of movement, the illusion of productivity that I’m craving, that I think we all are. To feel like we have options and actions we can take. To feel like we can do something other than wait to die.

Jared’s like, But the walking dead weren’t planning on crossing paths with one young man with a deadeye shot. With this, Jared lunges into a wide stance, his gun held like a gangster from a rap video. I tell him that’s enough.

Huh?

Noise, man.

Then he’s whispering. He says, Roger that. I feel what you’re putting down.

I can’t stand this motherfucker. If this is what it’s going
to be—daily role-play-Jared-as-adolescent-hero—then count me out. I’ll take my chances elsewhere. I wonder how KK was able to deal with it. She was so deadly serious when she used. Everything doom and gloom, and if she didn’t have blond hair you’d think she was goth queen of America. Then I’m remembering us using together. How it was fun at first. How this changed, like it always does. I’m remembering one night when she locked herself in the bathroom. I was annoyed and then worried and then frantic, knowing I’d see her ninety-pound body in a crimson bath, one wrist hanging over the porcelain, the tile stained with blood. So I broke through the door. The lock crumbled. She sat on the toilet, wearing an ugly pair of cream panties. We made eyes, then I followed her gaze to her abdomen. It was covered in raised circular bumps. I was like, What the fuck? She didn’t say anything. Just took the cigarette dangling from her thin lips and pressed its burning end into her stomach. I rushed over, knocked the cigarette onto the floor, and I was on my knees, my hands on her thighs, yelling, demanding she tell me what she was doing, and her stomach was like a fly’s eye—countless raised circles, each one staring at me like I’d let her down.

She petted my hair. She said, Can do bad all by myself.

J-Bone, Jared says.

Huh?

J-Bone. You like it?

What?

A nickname. J-Bone. I think it has a nice ring to it.

I shake my head and keep walking.

C-Money, Jared says.

No.

No?

No.

Hmm. Thought I was onto something with that. You sure? C-Money? J-Bone and C-Money out patrolling the grounds?

No.

We keep walking.

J-Bizzle and C-Maker.

You need to stop with that shit. I can’t deal with it right now. You feel me?

Roger.

I wish we had cameras set up around the property. That each square foot was covered with an eye in the sky and we had a control station set up and we’d take turns watching these grainy feeds, take turns making sure of our relative safety. Then I’m wondering how long the power grid will stay up. Nobody’s left to do whatever they do to keep power going. I think about total blackness and about having to go out and loot generator after generator and gasoline and how much this is going to suck.

J-Snizzle and—

I turn and grab the front of Jared’s T-shirt. His eyes widen. I’m about to hit him because he’s so fucking annoying and because he’s somehow found his way into the pants and heart of KK. He looks scared, surprised, his eyebrows all sorts of arched. I let go of his shirt. I say, Stop talking.

The hell, man?

I blame it on the need for silence, that we don’t know what’s out here.

He seems only somewhat satisfied with this explanation. He starts walking. I can see him straighten out the creases I’ve caused in his shirt. We’re quiet. I run my fingers along the chain link. I like the way it feels. It reminds me of driving on roads under construction, the smoothness between bumps.

Jared starts talking, his back to me. He says, I know this is hard for you. Would be for me too.

I don’t want to have this conversation with Jared. The proverbial husband and ex-husband moment of forced connection. It feels trite. I don’t respond.

But I appreciate it, he says. I really do. I know it would have been easier to leave me in that apartment. Nobody could have blamed you for that.

You would have done the same for me.

He shakes his head. He says, Not sure about that.

I laugh because this takes me by surprise, this comment, its honesty.

Seriously, Jared says. If the situation was reversed.… Shit, even if it
wasn’t
reversed, even it was still me with KK and I had to save you while putting my life in danger … might have been on your own.

Bullshit, I say.

Maybe. I don’t know.

The fence turns right, not quite at ninety degrees. We’re a good distance behind the shack. I’m glad to see he’s calmed down with the JLo comments and the aiming of his pistol.

The reason is simple, he says.

What is?

The difficulty I would have saving you.

Kind of a dick, I say.

I see the way she still looks at you.

I ask him what he’s talking about and play it off like he’s crazy, that I’m not following, but really I’m thinking that he might be right, that I wasn’t delusional, that we still share a connection, and maybe that’s just the reality of any two people coming together under the most fucked up of circumstances, us meeting in a round-cornered psych ward, and then us doing it together, sobriety, meetings, the moments when one of us was the lifeboat to the other’s ship sinking under the weight of self-hatred, and then us succumbing together to that sinking, convincing ourselves and each other that it was a good idea, scante, that we could weather any storm as long as we did it together. And then the end, us realizing we couldn’t. Maybe having gone through that, we shared something deeper than vows? Maybe there’s still a chance?

I’m about to try to change the subject because I don’t want Jared to see my full hand, but I hear something. I grab Jared. He flinches, thinking I’m going to get all aggro again. I whisper
listen
. It sounds like a motor, maybe the beaten motor of a pickup coming from somewhere deeper in the woods. My heart pounds in my ears. Then the engine noise fades.

You hear that?

Jared nods. He says, A car.

That’s what I thought.

Are there even roads back there?

Not sure.

They can’t drive, can they?

The walking dead? No, man. No fucking way. But somebody is.

Should we go check—

No.

You sure?

I run through the possibilities—some local guy trying to flee, some high school kid waking up from a bender, somebody who knows we’re here—and whoever it is, they are junkies, have to be, if my theory is correct. This person or persons must realize this too. They must know about the Albino. I think about meth being the one limiting variable to survival, and we have it, at least a week’s worth, and I hold Buster a little tighter.

What do we do? Jared asks.

I think about going out to investigate. Maybe it’s just a kid wanting a fix. I think about the walking dead roaming through the forest. I should warn the others that we heard a truck, that we might be expecting trouble. Or I could just tell the Albino. Other people know he’s here because that’s what he did, cook shit, ounces a week, and Typewriter and I weren’t the only ones he sold to. There are others. He’d know what to do. But then I think that maybe alerting him isn’t such a good idea. He’s already fucked up about us being here, and the thought of more coming might be too much.

Keep quiet about it, I say.

You serious? I’m really not sure what good that will—

Because it’s probably nothing. We don’t need the others
more paranoid than they already are. Have enough to worry about. And we’re taking the precautions to shore up this bitch.

I hardly think that’s fair.

You want to know what’s not fair? This, man, fucking
this
. I span my arms to either side. I tell him it’s not fair that everyone’s dead, that shit will never be the same. I want to keep going—tell him it’s not fair that he, the AA predator of newly sober girls, is the one with KK. That I have to pretend like shit’s all good. That I have to play the mentally together leader, that all I want to do is lock myself in the fucking car with the bin and shoot enough Tina to make my heart explode. I tell him to trust me. That the noise we just heard was nothing, at least nothing the others need to know about yet.

We take a group consensus—one teener isn’t enough per day. We settle on two.

We’re bored and spun and the Albino won’t put on clothes, outright refusing, telling us we’re lucky he’s letting us stay here at all, and then he smiles, his irises outlined in red, and says, When them sons a bitches come, they won’t know I’m not one of them.

I can tell KK’s drifting off into the dark cocoon of her
sped mind. Typewriter’s back to working his pick spot. His fingers are covered in skin and blood. Jared’s rocking in the other corner. I feel like masturbating. Each of us is having a completely different experience not five feet from one another. We need to get out of the shack. I smell my breath or maybe my crotch and it’s awful, stale butter popcorn covered in yeast. I think about the small pond Jared and I had passed on our walkabout. I ask the Albino if he dumps any chems in there.

Stupid fucking Crooked Cock, that’s my drinking water.

I feel like my mother when I suggest to the group we take a swim. I’m trying to raise morale, to lift spirits, and I
am
my mom. When I was growing up, she was coated in an exterior of pep, of good cheer. She’d been the first one to suggest activities. Bowling night. Game night. Picnic night. Everything with a title, everything trying to bring the family together. My father and I would trudge out of our own little worlds—me in my room playing Nintendo, him in his office doing bank work—and we’d climb into the family Suburban. We’d piss and moan. My mom would talk it up, how fun the science museum would be, how picking apples at Pine Tree would be perfect. But then something would happen. We’d start to have fun. My dad would forget about deals that didn’t go through. I’d forget about dying on the last boss of Mega Man. We’d be together doing something seemingly stupid but we’d make it fun, my mom the smiling family mascot. So this is what I’m thinking. I need to get us doing something other than shooting dope and caressing the barrels of our guns.

You guys want to go swimming?

Nobody responds.

Swimming? Anyone?

Typewriter mutters something to himself. He keeps touching the sore on his face, then examining his fingers, then back to digging.

I stand up. This gets their attention. I say, Let’s go. Everyone. We need to go swimming.

Busy, KK says.

Not acceptable. Everyone. Pond just behind the house. Will do everyone some good, get the stink off us, refreshing and shit.

I pull Typewriter’s hand away from his face. I tell him there’s nothing on or underneath his skin. He asks if I’m sure. I tell him I’m sure. I look over at catatonic Jared and I say, J-Bone, let’s go, man.

He gives me the widest shit-eating grin.

J-Bone, he says.

That’s right. Time to take a dip, J-Bizzle.

I could do that.

Fuck yeah, you can do that.

KK’s jaw is working overtime. She looks at me. I wonder what kind of shit is turning over in her head and then she gives a hint of a smile, at least her eyes do, softening from their cold-ass glare.

So we’re good? I say.

She nods.

Albino?

The
, he says.

The
Albino, you down?

Pass up a chance to see that fucking miraculous curving cock?

It’s not … I stop. What the fuck does it matter? We’re gathered at the door and I’m back to being my mom and I’m handing out after-school treats in the form of shotguns and then we’re all walking out of the house, into the woods, us a family, dysfunctional to the fucking core.

We head past the meth lab. I trail behind the group by a few paces. I like us—five motherfuckers who would steal a retarded kid’s helmet to pawn for a buck fifty—and we’re making this work. We’re beating the odds. We’re sticking to our new rations. We’re loaded and dangerous and there aren’t any walking dead and I tell myself not to think about the truck I heard earlier, that it was nothing, that it was somebody just trying to get by.

This is it? KK asks.

Yeah, not bad, right?

Scum all over the shit, yo.

Better than Chuck blood. Am I right?