Pariah (16 page)

“Oh,
Eddie.
”

“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t take that tone with me. The Comet needed to get his freak on with some genuine
la fica
, okay? You jealous? That what this is? You know, fuck this bitch, all right? I put it to her good and she didn’t make a peep. No struggle, nothing. So, yeah, I guess it was consensual. She didn’t complain a bit. Least she could’ve done was moan or something. Shown some appreciation. Like anyone ever paid her any mind. She should be fuckin’ flattered The Comet paid her withered snatch a visit.”

Dave was about to say something when Gerri sat up and let out a noise that shrank his balls—something between a hiss, a growl, and the toilet backing up. Her head jerked on its shattered neck, the jaw opening and closing, tongue lolling. A small amount of blood and bile spurted out and she was up on her feet.

“Fuck, that was quick!” Eddie shouted. “Oh fuck man,
fuck
!”

Nude or not, Dave knew something had to be done before she got her bearings—fresh ones moved
fast
. He grabbed an elephant-foot umbrella stand near the doorway and smashed Gerri in the face, snapping her head backwards. The sickening sound of her top vertebrae shattering lurched the meager contents of Dave’s stomach into his mouth, but he tamped it down and swallowed, hammering
her back. Even with her head resting against her upper back and hanging upside down she kept uttering foul bestial grunts, blood-thickened saliva oozing down into her flaring nostrils. With her head on the wrong way Gerri groped blindly and Dave pummeled her with the stand, which spilled umbrellas with each blow. How many umbrellas were in the damned thing? Big ones and small ones fell to the floor, which was also now drenched in Gerri’s various leaking fluids.

Finally he drew back the elephant foot and rammed her in the chest, sending her toppling back toward the rear windows. Steering her spastic body wasn’t easy, but after several more strategically aimed blows she crashed through the window and plummeted to the ground in the alley that had claimed Mike Swenson. Dave looked out the window and saw Gerri twitch a few times, then stand and limp off to merge with the other brainless things shuffling around down there. Satisfied she wouldn’t be joining them again, Dave dropped the battering ram and slumped to the floor.

“Wish you’d been that hardcore on the ice, bro,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, thanks for all your help.”

“Hey, The Comet’s impressed, buddy. I’m giving you props. That was awesome.”

“Yeah. Just leave me alone, okay?”

“Fine. What
ever
. Just tryin’ to give a compliment is all, bro. No need to get all menstrual and shit. The Comet’s outta here.”

Eddie pulled on his shorts and left through the front door as Dave retched onto the floor, his spew mixing with Gerri’s congealing blood.

The Comet.

The Rapist.

The Murderer.

Dave felt like one of those battered wives on
C
OPS
. The ones who kept telling the arresting officers—often through split lips and
sporting impressive shiners—how their men were really
good
men. “He’s a
good
man, officer! He’s a
good
father, officer! I
love
him, officer!” On went the cuffs and these scumbag deadbeat drunken pieces of white trash would get thrown in the backs of the cruisers looking glad for the vacation away from the wife and kids. The patrol car would drift away from the double-wide and poor beaten wifey, with her missing front teeth and eye swollen shut, would bawl at the absence of her man.

Dave knew just how those dopey broads felt.

“God
dammit
, stop bitin’ on me.”

Two days after the rain the mosquitoes came, spawned in pools of still water. The tenacity of some life-forms was incredible. Dabney refused to leave his spot, but the bites were a stiff price to pay for the hour or so of jubilation. He sat in his lean-to and swatted at the pesky bloodsuckers, swearing under his breath. After a while he couldn’t bear to sit still any more and got up and walked to his perch. Though the sun hadn’t fully set—and when it had the skeeters would really get to their deviltry—it was too dark to see whether the undead were being fed upon, too. The thought made Dabney’s mind race. If fleas and such could spread plague, if bugs bit on the zombies, then bit on a human, could that spread the contagion or whatever it was? Dabney thought about the West Nile virus and how the city had trucks drive around spraying poison through areas beset with mosquitoes. The only result he could recall was lowered birth weights in the areas the insecticide had been deployed.

West Nile was another so-called medical emergency that the local media had blown all out of proportion. Fear was always a powerful
ally to keep people tuned in.
Look out, West Nile will get you
, like it was some kind of microscopic boogeyman. A few old folks got ushered into the afterlife minutes before their time by West Nile, but that was about all. Still it panicked the city and suburbs several seasons in a row.

Malaria.

That was another story. Dabney had done some time working freighters in his youth and had traveled through some places rife with malaria—Haiti, Panama, and bits of Southeast Asia. He’d seen locals, but more frighteningly shipmates come down with it. One by one the crew of his last ship was afflicted. Fever, the shakes, head and muscle aches, tiredness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Anemia and jaundice. In the most extreme cases kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death. The skeeters spread malaria around like a whore spreads ass—amongst other things.

Maybe, unlike yellow fever and malaria, zombification wasn’t transmitted through mosquito saliva. Studies had disproved that AIDS could be spread through mosquitoes, so that was of some comfort. It was bad enough to get turned into one of those shambling sacks of meat from getting attacked by one, but to have it happen through a bug bite seemed so wrong.
Here’s hoping zombie fever is more like AIDS
, Dabney thought.

“Jesus God,” he sighed. “This is what passes for optimism these days.”

Dabney stepped over to his smoker and retrieved a small sliver of whatever-it-was jerky. There wasn’t much left. Dabney hadn’t eaten anything but his homemade charqui and the occasional can of okra or peas in weeks. Wasn’t this that Atkins diet? It was funny how the white folks in the building had donated their okra and black-eyed peas to him, kind of like a canned goods drive consisting purely of donated Purina Nigger Chow—well intentioned, but racist all the same. Why’d they have this stuff in the first place?
Martha Stewart or someone on the cooking channel must’ve inspired them to buy these “exotic” ingredients, but then they chickened out when it came to actually eating them.
Give ’em to the darkie; they eat anything
. Dabney smirked because there was some truth to that. He recalled holiday trips to rural Tennessee, eating his Aunt Zena’s chitlins and bear-liver loaf. That was some crazy shit. Or chitlins with hog maws. Shit, anything with chitlins was pretty fierce, especially drowned in hot sauce. Neck bones, backbones. Black folks had to be resourceful in their cooking; recipes formulated by dirt-poor bastards making do with what the white folks considered garbage.

And now, at the end of the road for humanity, Dabney was chewing on vermin jerky.

The more things change . . .

“I don’t even know why the fuck you’re worried. Who’s gonna care? And if they did, what would they do, call the cops? Stop sweatin’ it, bro.”

Dave had been freaking ever since the Wandering Jewess met her fate and it was getting on The Comet’s nerves, big time. Granted, her lickety-split resurrection was a tad harrowing, but shit happens, you deal. That was Eddie’s personal philosophy. If pussy wasn’t available, you made do. But if it presented itself, detours were made to be taken, even if they were skanky and gross.

“Seriously, bro, you’re wearing me out with all your pacing around. Relax.”

“I can’t. You killed her, dude. Then I
re
-killed her. How fucked up is that?”

“No, no, no. That was fuckin’
awesome
. You were just like,
bam-bam-bam
, workin’ her over with that fuckin’ elephant hoof.” Eddie laughed as he conjured the image. “That was
awesome
!”

“It wasn’t awesome, it was disgusting. It was fuckin’ horrific.”

“Dude,
whatever
. You wanna be a wet blanket, go ahead on, but
don’t harsh my mellow. I thought it was the bomb, bro. For the umpty-millionth time, Dave:
no one cares
. No one even knows she’s missing. She was a ghost even before I ghosted her. Look, she was barely there, anyway. She was just a creepy shadow lurking in the dark.”

Dave stopped pacing and considered Eddie’s words.

“Listen,” Eddie continued, slapping away a mosquito, “I don’t want you to waste any more time on this. Think of it this way, she died in the service of makin’ your bro feel better, like a skeezed-out dehydrated Laura Nightingale.”

“Florence Nightingale.”

“Whatever. She saved a life.
Two
lives.”

“How do you figure?”

“I was ready to kill Zotz, so she saved his life, not that that’s that good of a thing, but fuck it, man, she helped me get the lead out and fuck it, it was an accident, anyway. It’s not like I
meant
to perish her scrawny ass. She just kinda broke is all. Dem bones, dem bones, dem
dry
bones . . .”

“I’m made of tougher stuff,” Dave said.

Eddie smiled and slapped Dave on the back. “That’s the boy. It was a
‘tragic’
mishap,” Eddie smirked, framing his face in air-quotes. “Simple as that.”

“Well, that’s the last of it,” Karl said, staring into his empty cupboard. Not a morsel of food was left. In the last week he’d nursed each scrap in his coffers; now all he had to chew on was air. His stomach growled and he punched it hard. “Shut up,” he growled back. The kitchenette swam as his eyes teared up, hard edges wavering in lachrymosity. His knees felt flaccid but he willed himself to stay on his feet for fear if he hit the linoleum he’d never rise again. “This is so weak,” he moaned. Was there anyone he could
hit up for nourishment? Even the experts at rationing were down to fumes. The end was closing in, all righty.

He stepped out into the hall and at the top of his lungs shouted,
“Tenants meeting! Tenants meeting! All convene in the hall, please! Tenants meeting!
”

What could it hurt?

The first to answer the call was Eddie with a curt, “The fuck do you want, runt?” Dave followed Eddie into the hall, hopping as he cinched up a pair of sweatpants. It made Karl think of couples he’d known who’d pick up the phone during sex, then sound annoyed. Why’d they pick up in the first place?

Ruth stepped onto the landing across the hall and blinked at Karl. Though he stood only five foot five-and-a-half, he still towered over Mrs. Fogelhut, the only person in the building significantly smaller than he. It was her only endearing quality. “What’s the hubbub?” she asked in her grating way.

Joining Eddie and Dave on the fourth floor landing were Alan and Ellen, both of whom emerged from her apartment. Eddie had mentioned Ellen had shacked up with the artist. Karl’s mouth drew into a thin jealous slit.
Artists always get the chicks,
he thought bitterly. Then he mentally kicked himself for such a puerile thought.

“What’s going on?” Ellen asked, looking up at Karl, who clung to the banister for balance. He felt woozy from nerves and hunger, but though he wasn’t a fan of public speaking he was even less an admirer of starvation. “Yeah, what’s up, Karl?” Alan added. The range of expressions varied from concern (Ellen), to puzzlement (Alan), to annoyance (Eddie), to indifference (Dave), and finally incomprehension (Ruth). Abe and Dabney weren’t present, but Karl felt satisfied with the brisk turnout. At least he still had his pipes. He hadn’t planned out his spiel, but he knew he should choose his words carefully. Eloquence might be the only armament
in his arsenal. Feeling all the eyes burning into his fragile form he looked down, took a deep breath, and cleared his throat.

“Get the fuck on with it,” Eddie snarled.

“I’m hungry,” Karl peeped.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Eddie spat. “Like you’re the only one jonesing for chow. Don’t be pullin’ that shit,” he said wagging a threatening finger at Karl. “Next time you call a meeting make it your funeral, you whiny little bitch.”

“Except for the miserable mosquitoes, we’re
all
hungry, Mr. Stempler,” Ruth echoed, stepping back into her apartment.

Karl hung his head, braced for the final rejections.

“You all out?” Alan said, his face evincing the pained look of a man about to do the decent thing even though he didn’t want to. Karl nodded, shame coloring his bleached-out features. Like an ashen Rod Roddy, Alan waved the little guy over with a halfhearted, “Come on down.”

“Not much left,” Alan said, gesturing at Ellen and his combined provisions. “But what’s ours is yours, right?” Ellen nodded. Karl’s shoulders began to heave up and down as he tried to stifle tears, but failed. He began to keen like a baby, collapsing to the hard kitchen floor with a rickety kerplop. Once a mother, always a mother, Ellen’s maternal instinct kicked in and soon she was cradling Karl’s oversize noggin in her lap, absorbing his plentiful tears with her thin cotton summer dress. Though the touch of another human being, especially a female one, was of some comfort, Karl tasted every flavor of humiliation a person could as he sobbed into Ellen’s flat stomach. Ellen joined Karl, and soon both were wailing. Alan stood there not knowing what to do, flapping his arms at his sides.