Pariah (9 page)

“Look, don’t make a big thing of this, okay?” Alan said, hating the vaguely inveigling tone in his voice. “Ellen has enough on her plate. . . .”

“None of us have enough on our plates,” Eddie interrupted.

“I meant figuratively. Jesus. Anyway, this is just a temporary thing. I’m just trying to . . .”

“Get your dick wet. I understand. Dude, if there’s anyone in the building who’s on your wavelength it’s yours truly. That sensitive artist shit worked its hoodoo. I get it. Some chicks dig jocks, some dig nerds. I should’ve known Ellen was a nerd whore. Just look no further than the late Mikey Swenson. What was his racket? Computers?”

Mike had worked in the IT department at an investment brokerage down on Wall Street, so point to the observant jock.

“Look, just keep it on the DL, all right? Let the woman grieve in peace.”

Eddie sniggered. “Okay. On one condition.”

Alan sagged. “Name it.”

“Keep the nudie art comin’. I want you to keep me supplied with fresh whacking material. I don’t know why I didn’t think to tap you sooner, what with all other resources being nonexistent. Not like I can log onto Bang Bus any more.”

“You want me to do porno art of Ellen for you?” Alan gaped.

“Not just Ellen. And not the way she looks now. I’ll come up with some scenarios for you to do up for me. Okay? Okay. Now get the fuck outta my apartment.”

Alan traipsed downstairs and fell onto his bed in a daze. This was what prison must be like. Alan had always wondered if he could endure incarceration—especially long term. He figured his only survival skill would be doing pervy fantasy art for the other inmates. The rapists would want rape fantasies. The murderers would want murder fantasies. The hyphenates would want hybridized fantasies, one from column A, three from column B, and so on. And now a blackmailing ex-jock was leaning on Alan for post-apocalyptic pinups.

What would Vargas do?

“She’s turning blue, Mike. She’s turning fucking blue! You have to do something!”

“What am I supposed to do, Ellie? What? Go to the Duane Reade? Call a doctor?”

Ellen held Emily, barely a year old, and watched her tiny mouth open and close like a fish out of water. She’d wrung every drop of nutrition from her mother and the coffers were nearly bare. Ellen hated rationing, but what else was there to do? Mike was right, what could he do? Go out there? Sure, only to never return. Baby in tow, she tromped over to the front windows and radiated hatred at the undead things in the street below, milling about as ever, even in the freezing rain. She threw open the sash and leaned out, sleet stinging her face. She shielded Emily, pressing the small head against her depleted bosom.

“Fuck you all!” Ellen shrieked. “Fuck each and every one of you goddamned parasitic motherfuckers!”

Emily started to cry.

“What are you doing?” Mike bleated as he hastened to the window, grabbing his wife’s arm. “You could drop her.”

“And what, Mike?
What?
She’d be taken days before her time? Maybe I’d be doing her a favor. Look at this fucking world we’ve got here. And look at this family. A
balls-less
dad and a
worthless
mom with
sand
in her tits. She’s gonna fucking
starve
, Mike.
Starve.
So will we, ultimately, but Emily’s got no reserves. She’s wasting away. And
blue
.”

“ ‘Balls-less’?” her husband peeped.

“
That’s
what you got from all that? Brilliant.”

Over the prickly clatter of sleet the zombies heard the commotion above and stared up at the scene of domestic turmoil, hunger being the only urge left to animate their lifeless eyes. Ellen looked away from Mike back at the throng. She could win this bunch over in a second if she’d just fling herself and the petite hors d’oeuvre in the organic-cotton sling down to them. The lunch crowd would go wild, then move on. She remembered how the world had gaped in stupefaction and revulsion as Michael Jackson dangled his infant son out a hotel window. The multitude below, with their caved-in faces and bleached skin, reminded her of Wacko Jacko, but
she
was the one dangling the baby.

She slumped against the wall beneath the window and joined Emily in tears. Mike closed the sash and crouched down to comfort his girls, but his touch and gentle tone brought none. They were disconsolate and he was, truth be told,
balls-less
. But who wouldn’t be? Was it balls-less or just common sense to not leave the building? How could he? Ellen and Emily’s wailing grew louder, amplified by Mike’s sense of worthlessness. He rose and left the room to get some water for Ellen, but by the time he reached the kitchen, forgot his reason for being there, opened the front door and stepped into the common hall, his own expression as absent as those normally worn by the zombies.

“Quite a racket they’re raising,” Abe said, gesturing into the door, which hung ajar.

“Huh?” Mike said, his thoughts muddled. He blinked and focused on his neighbors, Abe and Paolo, the good-looking South American from 2B. “Oh, yes. Rough day.”

“Aren’t they all?” Abe said, earning earnest nods from both younger men.

“Indeed,” Paolo added. “These are dark days.”

Feeling the need to talk to people who presumably wouldn’t scream at him, Mike joined in, though he wasn’t feeling very conversational. “They’re hungry, Ellen and the baby. Hungry and tired. And frustrated. Ellen wanted me to go out and get supplies, but that’s not going to happen.”

“And that, my friend, is the difference between your generation and mine,” Abe scoffed. “If
I
had a starving child you can bet your last goddamn cent I’d be out the door trying to provide for her, damn the consequences.”

“Easy for you to say—,” Mike started, but Abe cut him off.

“Damn right it’s easy for me to say. As I recall you were home when this all began. Me, I hadda schlep all the way from the garment district to get home. I braved all kinds of madness to get home to my frightened little wifey. Granted, if I’d had some foresight I’d have stopped at the grocers before coming in, but hind-sight’s twenty-twenty.”

“It was different then,” Mike stammered. He’d really thought other men would commiserate with him over female troubles; bad to worse.

“Different! Feh. There were those lousy zombies all over then and they’re all over now. What, you think they weren’t chowing down on everyone in sight that day? Eighty-three years of age,
I
managed to get myself home intact. If any of you young
men
—,”
the word curdled in Abe’s mouth, “—had any
cojones
you’d go out and do what I did. Show the same resourcefulness and—”

Mike was tiring of having his gonads impugned and was about to protest—albeit weakly—when Paolo chimed in, his machismo also under attack.

“
I
have the
cojones,
Abraham,” Paolo spat, pique scoring his rugged features.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You challenge me? You saying I don’t have the
cojones
of an old man?”

Abe chuckled. “I sure as hell hope you
don’t
have a pair like mine.”

Paolo’s expression softened as Abe winked at him.

“These are dark days,” Paolo repeated, a bitter smile sneaking past his anger onto his lips.

“Amen,” Abe agreed. The sound of the crying, which hadn’t abated, brought the three men back to the matter at hand. “Regardless—and I don’t want to get into a shouting match—but the fact remains that there is a woman and a
child
who need sustenance and it’s a
man’s
job to provide.”

Mike’s face flushed. Sitting at computer consoles for the last decade hadn’t exactly toughened him up or primed him for hunter-gatherer mode. Men of Abe’s generation were built differently. They were shaped and hardened by war. Abe was a vet of World War II. Mike’s only combat experience involved button mashing on a game controller. Countless hours spent on
World of Warcraft
and
Call of Duty
didn’t count. He nudged the door open an inch to look in on Ellie and Em. Though the volume had decreased, both were in a bad way. And Ellie had said Em was blue and meant it literally. The apartment could be warmer and even though they were all wearing layers, they were cold in the damp chill.

“That baby needs to eat,” Paolo said, voice steely.

“I know, I know,” Mike replied, eyeing his shoes.

“If you are not enough a man to go, I will.”

“Now wait a minute—”

“Abraham is right,” Paolo said, in his formal, mild accent. “He is an old man and he made it here. He’s told us many, many,
many
times of his perilous journey. We were lucky, you and I and some of the others, to be here already, but he and John came late. And they suffered.”

Mike was about to assert that they’d all suffered, but point taken. Abe had walked the walk. As an old man was wont to do, he’d recounted his trek often—maybe even embellished a little—but scrawny old Abe Fogelhut had bested all the “young bucks.”

“My gear is down in the locker,” Abe said, but Paolo waved him off.

“I do not need hand-me-downs,
señor
.”

Paolo about-faced and trundled down to his apartment.

“
What?
I insulted him?” Abe scoffed.

“You insulted both of us.”

“Shaming isn’t the same thing. A little shame is a good thing.”

“If you say so.”

From their respective windows the residents of 1620 watched Paolo make it halfway across the avenue before being overwhelmed and consumed in his insufficient version of Abe’s improvised survival gear.

Abe retired his heroic saga.

A week later, Emily died.

Mike manned up enough to dispose of the petite corpse, sparing Ellen the details. He hoped the wrappings were sufficient to keep the creatures from eating her. But then again, they only seemed to go for live flesh.

Did that count as a blessing?

Karl stood by his open window, looking out across York Avenue. Between the zombies and the abandoned cars, including today’s fresh one, the street was so packed you couldn’t see the pavement, but Karl knew it was sticky as a movie theater floor in the glory days of Times Square. The street below, however, was shellacked with immeasurable quantities of blood. With the fire having burned itself out, the only noise was the hum of flies and the occasional grunt or moan.

Karl often wished he’d been old enough to enjoy the myriad adult entertainment palaces that had operated freely in the days before “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, had cleaned up the city. It was getting harder and harder to remember “important” figures from the days before the pandemic. Giuliani had been on a mission: to make the city safer and more antiseptic for its citizenry, but mainly for the tourists. New York had endured decades’ worth of bad image, fostered by both fact and distortions in the media. America overall had a skewed conception of the Big Apple: graffiti-streaked, litter-strewn, oozing with degenerates of every
ilk who were ready to ply their vile talents on wholesome, unsuspecting visitors.

Karl had relocated to New York from Ohio for the express purpose of being plied vilely, but it never happened. Like a nomad in the desert he’d followed a dreamy ignis fatuus of chimerical pendulous bosoms swaying to throbbing disco beats. By the time Karl got to Fun City, however, Times Square no longer resembled the one captured by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Paul Morrissey, or even Frank Henenlotter. This Ohio boy had wanted
Taxi Driver
,
Forty Deuce
, and
Basket Case
.

Instead he got
The Lion King.

Karl got a job, an apartment, and an education in reality versus illusion. And shortly thereafter it all went south. People started dying and coming back and eating each other and the rest was history. Who was to blame? No one knew, or at least no one was saying.

“
Thanks, Mean Joe
,” Karl spat, a vicious parrot tormenting himself. “
Thanks, Mean Joe. Thanks, Mean Joe
. Oh yeah, Dabney’s really going to welcome me up there again. Beyond thinking that I’m the biggest douche in the world, now he probably thinks I’m a racist.
Thanks, Mean Joe
. What else is he going to think? Stupid dumb stupid-head! Of course some hick from the hinterlands is going to be a cracker redneck racist. I’m just fulfilling my genetic-slash-socioeconomic obligation.”