Fiend (8 page)

Objective Three—Fill bag with Sudafed.

Ever since the government started keeping tabs on ephedrine sales, stores keep it right by the counter because it’s annoying for the pharmacists to have to go dig it out for every motherfucker with a cold. I see boxes and boxes on the shelf and I empty them into the bag. There’s got to be more and I tear through the shelves tossing bottles into the bag without reading labels, not knowing if I’m getting opiates or something for bladder infections, thinking that the Albino can turn anything into drugs. Toward the back I find the mother lode of Sudafed, hundreds of wax boxes of red and white packages and I’m grabbing them all, giddy at how kick-ass our plan is, giddy at the thought of the Albino cooking this all into pure dope.

I hear a gunshot.

Then another.

Typewriter, I yell. I grab the duffle bag and rush to the window. Type’s standing over a guy in a uniform.

What the fuck?

Typewriter’s jaw is clenching and unclenching. He wipes blood from his brow.

Fucking rent-a-cop must have turned, he says.

Any more?

Let’s go, let’s go, he says. I hand the duffle bag over and then crawl through the pharmacy window. I’m worried about the sound attracting more of them or maybe the security guard having a partner and we’re almost at the exit when I stop dead in my tracks and scream. Typewriter rams into me. I feel his front teeth on the back of my skull.

There’s a Chuck a few feet away. It’s a burly man, thick and squat, rocking a pair of stained yellow undies. I unload into his sternum. He stumbles forward, his arms outstretched, and I pull the trigger again. His head explodes and I’m covered in him, little chunks of his two-inch beard all over my arms, a piece in my mouth.

Suddenly a teenage boy is in the doorway taking swipes at me and I fire again, catching him square on the jaw, and then there’s a woman behind him. I start screaming because they just keep coming, an endless parade of motherfuckers trying to eat our flesh, and it’s more rounds into their giggling faces, me and Type firing, brown blood, pump, shot, giggle, and then Buster is out of shells and Typewriter is yanking at my arm and screaming that we should run.

I turn and sprint down the tampon aisle. I’m still holding on to the duffle bag and we’re at the back of the store, panting, being followed by a steady stream of giggling pieces of shit, and I point to the cubbyhole that is the pharmacy window.
Typewriter crawls onto the counter and they’re getting closer, at least five of them now in the store, and Typewriter is taking all fucking day so I shove his ass and he tumbles inside. I throw the duffle bag in because if we somehow survive this, I’m not about to return to the Albino empty-handed.

As I scamper through I can feel clawing at my feet.

I fall to the floor. Typewriter stands with his pistol raised firing shot after shot after shot. The sound is deafening.

I check my legs for cuts or claw marks. I’m fine. I stand up and see a pile of twitching bodies at the window. More are behind them. They can’t seem to figure out how to get inside and Typewriter is about to move onto his shotgun, but I tell him, No, wait to see if they can climb through.

We watch their reaching hands and listen to their shrill laughs so fucking loud I can’t hear the alarm. They swing at the open space of the window but can’t figure out how to raise a fucking knee and climb in.

Typewriter decapitates one with a shotgun blast.

Stop, need to conserve ammo, I say.

Fucking everywhere.

It’s cool, they can’t get in.

We look at these abominations a few feet away. They smell like period sex. Bits of flesh are missing and grins expose missing teeth, and there has to be at least fifteen. This wasn’t part of Operation Get Sudafed, getting cornered by tides of the motherfuckers.

The shelf, I say.

Typewriter helps me knock over one of the metal racks of meds. We smash it against the window opening, pills spilling
everywhere. The giggles don’t stop, but at least we don’t have to see the Chucks.

Jesus, Type says. We’re fucked. Completely fucked. Like there’s no way out and—

Stop, I say. We’re safe. They can’t get through.

For now.

That’s all we’ve got.

Fuck your day-at-a-time AA shit, he says.

It’s not—

How the fuck are we going to get out? Serious, this is it. Fucking done.

You need to calm down.

Typewriter fires his gun into the shelf. I grab his arm and think about smacking him across the face. I say, We need to stay calm. Figure this out. This is when the tears start. Typewriter’s chubby cheeks redden and he’s full-on crying, so I drop my tone, tell him I’ll get us out, I promise.

I guide him down to the floor and take the shotgun out of his grasp. He just keeps saying, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.

I know I need to calm him down. Yeah, we are pretty close to being fucked. God knows how many Chucks are feet away, they’ll figure out a way to get through the pharmacy window. And then I realize I need to calm down too. That I’m crying. Both of us crying and holding on to the other’s shirt. I stand up. I need to find something to take the edge off.

Where are you going? Don’t leave—

I’m not, I say.

I’m not sure if pharmacies alphabetize their drugs or
organize them by type. I’m looking for anything that will retard my mind—benzos or barbiturates or opiates—and I’m throwing bottles on the floor, scanning for anything resembling a name I know. Finally, I find a bottle of grape cough syrup with codeine. It’s not great, but it will do. I rip off the top and take two long pulls.

The hell?

Drink this.

We’re going to die and all you care about—

Fucking drink this.

Typewriter takes the bottle in his shaking hands and brings it to his lips. Like a mother I tell him, Good, there you go, and he drinks and some dribbles down his chin. It feels kind of queer but I use my finger to dab it.

I take another drink. So does Type.

The giggles are getting louder. Hands reach through the shelf.

Give me that, I say. Back to me. Back to him. We kill the bottle and it might not have been the smartest thing to do, drinking the
entire
bottle, but whatever. I can already feel my world slowing. I’m not sure if this is a placebo or a chemical reaction but I guess it doesn’t matter.

We’re going to die, Typewriter says.

I don’t know if this is a statement or a question so I say nothing. I tell myself to think. I picture our situation like a middle school riddle—if two men are trapped in a pharmacy with limited resources and a horde of flesh-eating parasites at the window, what do they do? The answer comes to me. Look for another exit. The fuck is wrong with me that I hadn’t
thought of that before? I stand and tell Type to stay put. I see a metal door at the far end of the room. I’m about to open it to see where it leads, when I hear clawing and scratching and giggling from just outside.

Fuck, I yell.

I hear a gunshot and I’m afraid Typewriter has just put the barrel in his mouth but I turn and he’s just shooting at the flailing hands at the window.

Stop wasting ammo.

I search the rest of the death box we’re locked in. There’s no other window, no other door. Maybe this is it, the one corner I won’t be able to escape from. And maybe it’s fitting, me dying locked inside a pharmacy. I sit next to Typewriter. I can tell the cough syrup is working its magic because his pupils are shrinking.

I don’t know, man, I say.

Don’t tell me that.

I just don’t know.

The door?

Is surrounded. Can hear them.

So this is how it ends?

Dude …

He fires his shotgun again.

I can feel things shutting down—my reflexes, my verbal opposition to Type’s shotgun blasts, my God-given adrenaline at the very real possibility of death—and I think about how long it’s been since I’ve slept, like
really
slept, and I’m counting on my fingers and I lose track but I’m guessing it’s got to be somewhere in the range of eight hours in the last week.

It takes me a second to realize Typewriter is kicking my foot with his. I struggle to pay attention. He says, Rip Van Winkle motherfucker.

I tell him that I like girls who wear those velour sweat suits.

He laughs.

Serious, man. Gives me a boner.

Let me guess, KK wore them?

I try to remember if this is true and I can’t for some reason, KK’s image being cut off at the shoulders and it’s those trenches of her collarbones and that skinny neck and that sharp chin and that nose like a half of a sandwich and her bangs just barely past her hairline and I wonder why I said this in the first place. Then it’s the grainiest eight-millimeter clip of a memory. I’m following KK in a department store. I have the feeling of being a dog on a leash. I like it. She’s touching the fabric of racks of clothes. We’re sober, that much I remember, and she’s complaining about getting a fat fucking ass because of this very fact. I keep telling her no. You’re perfect. I make a grab at her ass. She says, Don’t touch that flabby piece of shit. I tell her
shitter
. She gives me that look—one like I’m complete fucking scum, but a loveable piece of scum. She tells me that a sweat suit will be the only thing she can fit into. She picks out a few. We sneak into the dressing room. A thirtysomething tries on business clothes. She looks nervous that I’m sitting there watching. I knock on the dressing room door. KK’s standing there topless with her boy-flat chest and puffy nipples and she’s wearing a pair of black velour sweatpants and I need to have her and maybe she needs to have me
because she greets me with a forceful kiss and that’s how it is, force, passion, too much, us not knowing how to deal with the world and our bodies and jobs and parents and rent and brushing our teeth and making our beds and us not knowing how to deal with a fucking thing without the aid of scante, and I feel the soft promise of those pants against my hand and then my dick and then it’s KK’s loud moans and I think about the thirty-something hearing this, if she’d be smiling or calling the cops.

I’m thinking this shit with Type a foot away. It feels kind of gay. I fumble around in my pocket for a cigarette. We’re quiet. I find my pack and the first drag tastes like heaven. Type asks me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I stare at the cherry of the cigarette. I watch the smoke rise in vertical plumes. I think this is weird. Then I’m thinking about his question and it was a professional soccer player when I was a kid and then it was an astronaut for a short while and then I think about high school and loving music and me not being horrible on the drums and our band that played a few local shows, places like the record shop and a school bonfire, and then in college how I took a philosophy class and was all about that and then it was a human geography course and I knew I’d be good at the interplay between humans and the environment and then I think about smoking shit and how I didn’t have to worry about a future because for those moments, I could be anything I ever fucking wanted to, and it wasn’t just a fantasy, but a reality, me able to conquer the world, to matter, to make a fucking difference. And I’m watching the smoke and I’m thinking about his question
about what I wanted to be and the answer comes quick and it isn’t sexy or amazing and it startles me because I’d never allowed myself to think it before—my dad.

Typewriter doesn’t laugh. He says, I feel you there.

I’m not sure if I’m sleeping or awake and I’m seeing my father’s face decompose and I’m seeing maggots crawling from his parted lips and I’m imagining his readers now resting on the cartilage of his nose and then I’m seeing him one Christmas Eve and it must have been close to three in the morning and I’d snuck downstairs to see if I could get a glimpse of Santa and there he was, my father, sitting on the Persian rug, a G.I. Joe base erected between his legs, a penlight in his mouth, an instruction sheet spread open to his right, and I understood at that very moment that there was no Santa. I’d snuck back to bed, resentful and hurt. It’d taken me years to realize that my father would do anything for me. That he would go the entire night without sleeping just to set up my toys. That everything he did was for the family, to keep up the illusion that magic happened, that he wasn’t the person who made it all stick together.

They’re all gone.

I don’t realize I’ve said it until Typewriter agrees. He says, Each and every one of them.

I let my eyes close. I don’t fucking care anymore. I’m not sure if it’s the drugs or the sleep or acceptance. This almost makes me chuckle,
acceptance
, the cornerstone of everything they taught us in AA. I think of my counselors telling me I was withholding something. How I wasn’t fully
letting go
. I wasn’t fully
accepting
. They told me I’d be back, beaten down even
more because the disease of addiction had a way of making believers out of everyone.

So this is it, I think. This is me accepting my fate. To die at twenty-five. To die with the only person who might still be considered a friend.

The inch-long stack of ash falls from my cigarette. I take a drag.

It will all be over soon.

Some pleasurable sensation starts radiating through my thigh. Maybe this is death? I let the vibrating continue and I’m like maybe God or my father or whoever is taking me away, sparing me the suffering of however long it is until real death, and I’m smiling, ready for this, ready to be done with this fucked-up trip through life, but the vibrating continues. It’s a familiar sensation. I fight my way back to consciousness. My fucking phone!

I rip out my phone and it’s ringing and ringing and the caller says KK and I’m like, No fucking way, and I flip it open and I’m all, Hello, hello?

Chase!

Fucking god, you’re okay.

You’re alive.

I thought you were—

Me too.

I’m pressing the phone to my ear and yelling into the receiver and Typewriter wakes up and I’m crying for real now, bawling and shit, and we keep saying I thought you were dead and this goes on forever and things will be okay because she’s alive.