Pariah (40 page)

Without waiting for Mona he dashed up the down escalator and ran onto the mezzanine, taking care to avoid the gaping hole. The gun felt good against his thigh, heavy and reassuring. Screw Mona and her “no guns” policy. Finders, keepers. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw nothing unusual: some chairs, the upholstery cooked away, the springs and foundations jutting out, bookcases, books, books, and more books.

“Yo!” he shouted, caution to the wind. “Karl, you in here?”

A soft moan from the back of the landing.

Mona softly touched his bare shoulder and he felt a tingle from head to toe. It was the first time a woman had voluntarily made contact with him since everything went kablooey. What was harder, he wondered, his dick or the barrel of the gun, and which would do more damage if it went off? The light from Mona’s headlamp bothered Eddie’s dark-adjusted eyes and he fanned it away, frowning deeply as she stepped ahead of him. Those dead eyes of hers. Those
pointy little titties. Her nipples weren’t hard but they were visible. His dick was very hard. This was fucked up. He was sweating more than the temperature warranted and again his mouth felt horrible; he could taste his breath, which was bad. He wanted some mints. His eyes darted back and forth in their sockets and he could feel his skin, like it was swarming with ants.

The moan sounded again.

“Karl!”

“
Shhh
,” Mona cautioned.

“Why? What’s th’ fuckin’ diff’? We’re immune, so it’s all good.” He gave his erection a firm squeeze through the coarse fabric of his pants. He was freeballing, so no underwear cushioned his jewels and scepter. He moved his hand up and down once or twice. The gun felt good. His hand felt good. His whole body felt like a cell phone on vibrate.

“We’re immune?” Mona repeated, eyeing him.

“
You’re
immune,” Eddie gabbled. “You are.
You
. We got the umbrella going on.”

Mona squinted at him in a way that made her sexier and more slappable in equal measure. The moan came again. Mona gestured for Eddie to follow her. He was sick of this follow-the-leader arrangement.
He
was the
man. She
should be following
him.
She should be doing a lot she wasn’t doing. Aping a yawn Eddie tossed down a couple of her purloined pharmaceuticals, smacking his lips in a gross, cartoonish manner.

“The Comet needs some water, soon.”

“
Shhh
.”

“Cotton mouth.”

“
Shhh
.”

They turned the corner and the headlamp illuminated a group of hunched over zombies polishing off Karl’s remains, his torso opened like a savaged piñata. Vibrant graffito of arterial spray decorated the
bathroom wall, fresh blood pooled in all directions, and Mona had a bona fide reaction: she threw up. Sensing her presence, the zombies recoiled and retreated deeper into the men’s room, smearing blood and viscera. Mona wiped her mouth and was about to suggest escape when Eddie opened fire, blasting away huge chunks from the zombies’ tatty frames. The grisly collage of hominid stroganoff—some old, some new, some juicy, some juiceless—was an Ed Gein wet dream.

Staid Mona, momentarily wigged out by the gore-and-gun combo platter, hugged the wall behind her and clamped her eyes shut, humming to internally mute the gunfire.

“Yeah!”
Eddie bellowed.
“Suck on that, bitch! Suck
it!
Suuuuuck
it!”

He stood back and pumped off another shot. He didn’t know how many were in the clip. He didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking. He was priapic in his bloodlust, engorged and fully engaged, reveling in the moment. The reports from the gun were deafening. He loved it. This was even better than flynchin’. He
had
to get more ammo. Didn’t matter how long it took to find some, this bitch was not going to impede his need for munitions any longer.

“Fuck yeah, baby! Fuckety fuck fuck yeeeeaaaah!”

Unnoticed by her gun-crazed companion, Mona edged away and turned the corner, hunkered down amidst scattered remainders, and clamped her hands over her ears. Eddie pulled the trigger a tenth time, enjoyed the muzzle flash and resultant damage, and found his new toy spent.
Click, click, click
. He looked over in the direction Mona had been to find empty wall. The fuck? Confusion followed by the incomparable sensation of jagged teeth bearing down on bare shoulder meat. His.

Eddie’s orbs met those of the zombie whose teeth were dug into his upper arm. Eddie’s deep brown and lively, his attacker’s gummous and gray. The communication between them crystalline:
I am going to eat you
versus
oh no you aren’t
.

Eddie shrugged off his assailant and brought the Smith & Wesson down on the bridge of its former nose, now just crusty cavernous slits. Bone splintered and the thing let out a low groan, but didn’t lose interest in its dinner.
So much for immunity
. He scanned frantically for Mona. Another zombie fell on Eddie, teeth bared, bony fingers digging into his waist, not quite breaking the skin, but near enough. Eddie batted away at both, shrieking, “
Mona, help!
” So much for pride.

Mona came around the corner, looking less apathetic than usual, but with her mojo intact. The zombies caught one whiff and, like skeeters from deet, fled. Eddie assayed the damage. A ring of oozing, bloody tooth holes limned his shoulder. His abdomen ached.

“You took your sweet fuckin’ time,” he growled.

He felt sickened by his girly plaint for assistance.

“I covered my ears,” Mona said. “The gunshots.”

And yet still he was hard.

“The gunshots,” he echoed. “You and guns. What’s up with that? You go out and see these fuckers every fuckin’ day an’ you go all weak at th’ knees ’cause of some loud noise? The fuck is that shit?”

Mona shrugged, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. She was gross. Like a little kid, only a little kid with womanly hips and a nice round ass.

“So I don’t know how this shit works,” Eddie said, staring at his wound. “Do I become one of those things or what? In the movies they always become one of those things. But maybe movies are bullshit.”

Mona shrugged.

“God, that pisses me off,” Eddie spat. “That little shrug of yours. You’re no mute. You can speak. So what’s with the little tics and shit? You got something to say,
say it
.”

“I dunno what to say.”

Eddie rubbed the damaged spot, smearing blood. He looked at
his palm. It scintillated. He was sweatier than before, his face hot. Burning. Feverish. His mouth felt drier than ever. Maybe it was just adrenaline—his nerves were pretty jangly—or maybe it was the infection.

“This could’ve been prevented,” he said, more to himself than Mona. “But I blame
you. You
misled us. Those drugs ain’t worth shit.” He rubbed his crotch absently, inadvertently wiping blood all over it. The sweat stung his injury. “Fuckin’ drugs.” He shook his head, face pinched.

“We should go,” said Mona, her voice fainter than usual.

“I blame
you
.”

“Really, we should.”

“Fuckin’ drugs.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“I need a pick-me-up.”

Eddie yanked her into the bathroom and, amidst the bloody ruins that were Karl and his attackers, palmed Mona’s head down toward the sink, ripped down her pants and underwear, then spat into the cleft between her buttocks. It was then that he noticed his dick had gone soft. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” he shouted at his offending member. Mona pushed back against his arm and Eddie ground her face into the scuffed porcelain, gripping the back of her head with one hand and trying to massage vigor back into his flaccid appendage.

“You’re not goin’ anywhere,” he snarled at her. “And you,” he directed at his groin, “you better learn some fuckin’ teamwork.” He attempted to push his unit in, but it just bent away from its target, spongy as a Twinkie. “This is unreal. Un-
fuckin’
-real.” It always bugged Eddie when guys in porn made do with soft-ons, trying to push rope uphill. He never understood how these ingrates couldn’t get wood. Now he did and it made him angry.

He released Mona’s head from the basin but as she raised it he
cautioned her with his fist. “Nowhere,” he whispered, face creased with rage. “
Nowhere
.” Though her back was still to him their eyes locked in the mirror. That was another thing he didn’t like about her; she barely ever blinked. She was like a cat. Or a baby. And Eddie had no fondness for either.

He tugged at the uncooperative flesh and with each stroke it seemed more willfully limp. He broke eye contact with Mona and let his focus drift down her face where it alighted on the corner of her mouth, which curled almost imperceptibly into a smirk of ridicule.

“You laughing at me?”

He pulled on his dick harder. That face of hers. That deadpan fucking face. It was almost worse when it showed a glimmer of personality. Personality that mocked him.

“You fuckin’ laughing at me?”

Maintaining eye contact she slowly shook her head, pressing herself against the pedestal and washbasin. Her fingers snailed their way along her bare upper thigh toward her underpants until they made contact and lightly curled around the elastic waistband.

“Oh no you fuckin’ don’t.”

Eddie lunged at her and she juked toward the door, unable to run with her pants half-mast. His arm shot out and grabbed her, and as he yanked the small girl toward him, he backhanded her across the face. She stumbled backward, raising her hands in self-defense. With zero mirth, Eddie laughed, the ugly sound echoing in the tile-covered tight quarters.

“That’s hilarious. Your mojo don’t work on
me
, toots.”

Ten minutes later, wiping his hands off on his pants, he stepped off the escalator and made for the sunny street.

The street.

The crowded street.

The street chockablock with zombies.

Oops
.

He turned to fetch Mona.

More teeth on flesh.

Not immune
.

Not just his shoulder.

Should’ve worn a shirt
.

Bony fingers gripping.

The drugs
.

Not immune
.

Flesh tearing. More blood. So much blood.

Why didn’t she say something?

As he came apart Eddie whispered,
“Ellen would’ve struggled.”

“You can’t be serious,” Ellen sputtered, following Alan past the barricaded front entrance and down into the musty basement. She was still feeling like they’d had some kind of breakthrough by the window and now here was her inamorato psyching himself up for a quixotic, most likely suicidal undertaking.

“Of
course
I’m serious. You think I
want
to be doing this? I have to. If there’s no more Mona there’s no more us. She’s our lifeline. So, I have to.”

“Can’t we give it a little more time?” Ellen pled. “It’s only been—”

“A day. A whole day. It’s like Ten Little Indians, Ellen. We’re down two men and Mona. Plus, Abe, Ruth, and who knows what became of Gerri.”

Alan placed the camping lamp on a stack of crates and looked around the room. In all the months since the pandemic began he’d been down here only once or twice. There were a couple of cage-style wire mesh lockers for tenants near the boiler, one rented by the Fogelhuts, the other unoccupied. Alan approached the Fogelhuts’ locker and gave the combination lock a yank.

“Figures,” he muttered. “I’d suggest looking for the combination in their apartment, but that could take forever.”

“I’d suggest you abandon this, period.”

He wanted to. He really did, but this was all there was to do. He wasn’t about to go to Dave or Dabney. Both were borderline basket cases these days, Dave going through cold-turkey withdrawal from both Eddie and the drugs, and Dabney recapturing the days of wine and roses. No, no outsourcing this time. Time to man up, even if he wasn’t necessarily the man he wanted to be.

Alan dug around Mr. Spiteri’s tools, which lay in a haphazard array on and about a crude wooden worktable by the stairs. There were several toolboxes, which he rummaged through until he produced a thick, heavy-gauge pipe wrench. He took several vicious whacks at the lock, the only result being the bones in his fairly delicate hands being rattled.

“See? Futile,” Ellen said, a manic smile splitting her face. “Okay, you gave it your best shot, so—”

“Not that easy,” Alan said. He fetched a thick pair of rubberized work gloves off the bench and returned to the locker, smashing not the sturdy lock, but the lightly rusted fitting through which it was looped. That broke away from the locker after ten focused whacks and with a creak, the door swung open. Alan grinned, pleased with his mettle.

“This is the worst idea, ever,” Ellen said, panic rising. “
Ever
.”

“You ever read Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’? If we don’t get Mona back we’re looking at the longest short winter of our lives and a very limited menu.”

Ellen rubbed her still-flat belly, absorbing Alan’s comment. “That’s in very bad taste,” she said.