Pariah (24 page)

“The hell is wrong with you, son?” Dabney hollered. “Slamming up here like that. You wanna give me a heart attack?”

As a matter of fact
, Eddie thought as he stalked by, ignoring Dabney’s upbraiding.
And I’m not your son.

Eddie reached his old building and headed down the fire escape to his window, still open like Dave had left it. Eddie hadn’t
returned since the Wandering Jewess incident. That was intense. Eddie thought about the way Dave had handled her and he felt pride swell in his chest. Dave was a
finocchio
, but still a man. That was some hardcore shit. The way he knocked her block off—or almost off. With an elephant’s foot? Just thinking about it made him chuckle. Reminded him of his childhood
Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots
. Two robots pounding the bolts out of each other, one red, one blue. Eddie was always blue because his dad said red was a commie color. Papa knew best. That was a cool toy.

Eddie recalled his time with Gerri. Sure she was a vegetable—at least until she became the meat course—and nothing to look at, but he’d almost forgotten how nice pussy felt.

“Gotta get the porn,” Eddie said. “Stay on point. Focus.”

He vaulted through the apartment to his old room and threw open the door. At the foot of his bed, under a pile of clothes, was his dad’s old army footlocker. He knelt down and undid the combination lock, which opened with a sturdy pop. Inside was his treasure trove. He felt like Indiana Jones scoring that shiny bauble at the beginning of
Raiders
. He’d forgotten to bring something to carry home the boodle, but nearby was his old gym bag, still overstuffed with dirty laundry. He unzipped it and dumped its contents on the floor.

“So
that’s
where these were. Duh,” he said, shaking his head as he put his Nike Air Mowabb cross trainers back in the bag. He then started loading DVDs into the sack.

As he struggled with the zipper, the bag now stuffed to bursting, he heard a sound from the living room. He ceased his activities and froze. There it was again, a soft shuffling. The Wandering Jewess had been evicted so what was this shit? Eddie gingerly placed the overstuffed bag on the bed and tiptoed into the hall. He held his breath and eyeballed the exit window. He was curious, but how curious? Wasn’t the cat killed by curiosity? Eddie hated
cats, with their rough tongues, bad breath, and haughty attitude. Who was the first to call vagina
pussy?
Why insult such a sweet thing by naming it after a cat? Whatever. The sound happened again. There was somebody in the other room. That spooky chick? Nah. Why would she come here? Cursing himself for pursuing it, Eddie stepped into the hall and slunk toward the living room.

A plastic cup from 7-Eleven rolled toward him, settling at his right foot.

“Hey,” Eddie said, voice steely. “Who the fuck is there?”

Eddie poked his head into the room and several zombies stood there. The front door wide was open. As he turned to flee, two more stumbled from the bathroom, which was between him and the exit window.

“Fuck me,” Eddie growled, cursing himself for the
stunod
that he was.

From the living room, one loped toward him, then tripped and fell as its legs became entangled in its own leathery intestines, which dangled from a gaping cavity in its lower abdomen. Its jaw hit the linoleum floor and came loose, leaving it cocked to one side and toothless. Eddie would have enjoyed the zombie’s clumsiness were there not several others who shuffled his way, their paths free of stray innards. Eddie cursed the narrowness of the hall, a mere three feet wide, but long.
Goddamn railroad apartments
. The ones emerging from the john effectively blocked his exit, but he’d have to bull through. Hockey penalty time. Still, he wished he were less exposed.
Maybe the Tarzan wardrobe isn’t the best idea
.

Eddie gulped a few deep breaths, then ran forward. He caught a female zombie in the face with his fist, sending her careening backward, ass over tit. Her head hit the doorsill and split open, spilling coagulated gunk, dark and thick as molasses. Her bathroom buddy, a rangy male with graveyard halitosis, lunged for him and from behind, slung his gangly arms around Eddie’s waist. Eddie couldn’t
turn around, so he did a backward head butt, ramming the back of his skull into the zombie’s face, praying all the while that the zombie wouldn’t bite him.
Fuck that shit
. The zombie’s grasp loosened and Eddie shrugged him off, spinning on his heel. Even though he knew he should flee, he was now pissed. He blundered back into his bedroom and slid open his closet door, the action so violent the door came off its tracks and fell against the inside wall. Eddie grappled with the door and flung it off to the side, groping for his hockey stick.

“
High-sticking,
huh? The Comet’ll show you motherfuckers some high-fuckin’-sticking!”

Like some po-mo Spartan warrior, Eddie turned back into the hall, stick in hand, helmet his only other garment besides his briefs and espadrilles. With a vicious upward slash he took the head off the one that bear hugged him in the hall. From his bedroom in the middle, Eddie still needed to get to the fire escape at the rear of the apartment. The headless body convulsed as Eddie stepped over it and a palsied, rotten hand shot up and grabbed the back of his briefs, tearing them.

“The fuck?” Eddie cried. “Oh, you wanna play fuckin’ games?”

He stomped on the thing’s solar plexus, its withered organs emitted muffled popping noises. The arm went limp but the rigor mortis grip on Eddie’s Calvins intensified, pulling them down like a macabre pastiche of the Coppertone pooch yanking down that little pigtailed girl’s bathing suit. Eddie tore free, now wearing just the waistband and pouch in the front, like some poorly constructed jockstrap.

Only one adversary left, an eyeless one-armed creep of indeterminate gender, face composed—or decomposed—solely of strands of muscle tissue barely masked by shredded, papery epidermis. Eddie jerked back the stick, then rammed it as hard as he could through the thing’s chest, impaling it. “Vlad don’t have shit on me!” Eddie
wailed. He raked the stick back and forth, the zombie clawing at it, trying to free itself. Eddie jerked it upward, lifting his foe off the ground. The rib cage split open like a zipper, bits of desiccated bone and sinew raining down as Eddie worked the stick up and down until the thing split in half. As it twitched pitiably on the floor, Eddie swung down the stick and delivered the killing blow, shattering its skull.

Eddie grabbed the bag of porn and stepped onto the fire escape, slamming the window shut after him, hoping against hope that those zombie
gavones
were the only ones to breach the building. Still, he wouldn’t be coming back to the old roost. On the roof he checked the stairwell door to confirm its security status. It was sealed shut. Relieved, he slumped back against the warty black tar paper and caught his breath, quaking. So, they got in. That meant the half-assed fortification the Guardsmen had installed was wrecked. Great. He gulped air and punched his chest. Now that he was safe, the fear sluiced over him. Though it had to be ninety degrees he was shivering.
Calm the fuck down
, he admonished himself.
Don’t be a fuckin’ girl. Calm the fuck down
.

Even alone he won no prize for compassion.

“I’d forgotten how comforting banality can be,” Alan said as he shut off the little DVD player. He’d been watching back-to-back episodes of
Three’s Company
. “What a stupid show. Why did you have this in your library?”

“It was Mike’s. He loved John Ritter.”

Alan sat back, feeling a little bad about maligning the show. It
was
bad, though. Seriously bad. Maybe it had been nostalgic for Mike. A lot of boys watched it, along with
Wonder Woman
and of course
Charlie’s Angels,
all because of the jiggle factor. Alan never found women who seemed stupid sexy, though, and Suzanne Somers embodied that to a preternatural degree. Watching her and getting aroused would have carried the psychic baggage of getting a boner from a hot retarded girl.

Alan looked over at Ellen. She was doing a crossword puzzle. The scene seemed oddly peaceful. Comforting. It was hard to reconcile this image of domestic tranquility with the sea of undead meat puppets outside. Ellen had filled in a bit and looked more like her old self, which was to say she looked very attractive. But to
what end? Mona’s arrival on the scene was a stay of execution, not a repeal. Okay, there were creature comforts. They had food again, and light at night. Alan was clean shaven and well groomed, so when the time came he’d now leave a good-looking corpse, or at least make an attractive main course. Moments ago he’d felt comforted by a moronic sitcom and now he felt like everything was utterly pointless. Seeing the predictable pandemonium that was the bygone world of Jack Tripper, Chrissy Snow, and Janet Wood just amplified the horror of reality. Alan pressed the eject button and replaced the disk in its case, vowing not to revisit their sunny vale of canned mirth. Enervated, he schlepped to the window to soak up a solid dose of actuality.

“That show was kind of funny,” Ellen said, looking up from the puzzle book.

“It was horrendous,” Alan said.

“I thought you just said it was comforting.”

“Yeah, well I misspoke. Sue me.”

“It’s funny.” When Alan didn’t ask what was, Ellen continued, “There’s a clue in this puzzle, ‘ThighMaster mistress from
Three’s Company.
’ Isn’t that a funny coincidence?”

“Hilarious.”

“Bad moods can be very contagious, especially in close quarters.”

“You saying you want me to leave?”

“No. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m saying is there anything I can do to alleviate your funk?” Ellen rose from the table and began to undo her blouse, but Alan turned away.

“Not everything can be solved with sex,” he muttered.

“It used to be.”

“There are a lot of
used-to-be
’s. Used to be Manhattan wasn’t a massive graveyard full of corpses too stupid to stay still. Used to be we could go outside and walk around and not worry about being eaten. Used to be . . .”

“Okay, fine. I get the picture,” Ellen snapped, refastening her buttons. “Look, I
really
don’t want to get into a
thing,
okay? Why don’t you go to your apartment and do some drawing or something? Maybe take a walk.” Alan raised an eyebrow, but before he could say something snide Ellen added, “
On the roof.
Or the hall. Just go out for a while.”

“I thought
this
was my apartment now.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Ellen said, and instantly Alan regretted his snippiness.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but Ellen fanned him off, gesturing toward the front door. “Really, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

On the landing Alan stared at the outside of the closed door.
A domestic squabble,
he thought.
How banal. But not in the least bit comforting
. Could Jack maintain his pretense as a preening homosexual, keeping Mr. Roper ever at bay? Could Chrissy wear a top that was even lower cut, but not so low cut the network censors wouldn’t let it air? Could Janet utter some pithy platitude that neatly wrapped up their dilemma with a trite little bow? Could he and Ellen pretend to be a happy couple while all else was unimaginably bleak?

Stay tuned.

Karl sat on his bed in his bare-walled apartment.

Along with all the pinups, gone were the posters of heavy metal demigods.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
. Since the arrival of Mona he’d reevaluated his secular values and desires and felt nothing but shame. That he’d intended to attempt to bed her was something he’d have to live with in private. Thank God he hadn’t articulated his impure desires to anyone, least of all her. In the passing weeks he’d born witness to her selflessness. And the way she moved unscathed by the ravenous masses outside.

Karl didn’t believe in the Rapture, but he didn’t
not
believe in it, either. The husks shuffling around outside weren’t “left behind.” At least that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. But maybe they were. The Bible and Bible prophecy were so open to interpretation. He thought if you didn’t get sucked up to Heaven you were to remain on the hellscape that was Earth and live out the remainder of your days, biding time until you went to hell. Where did those things outside fit into God’s plan? Karl remembered some lines from Corinthians. “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” And “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Death’s sting and victory were pretty evident to Karl’s eyes.