The Dead Parade (6 page)

James edged towards the family. He saw a mangled tricycle at his feet and the urge hit: he needed to get out of the house. He needed to get away from the smoke, the car, the family, and everything else that was around him. He needed an open space. He needed to find a place where he didn’t feel trapped, a place he hadn’t destroyed. It was time to run, time to hide, time to go.

The youngest boy was standing in a hallway. The hallway had to lead somewhere: a window, a door, outside.

As James approached the boy, the Spanish woman grabbed his tie and pulled on it. She yelled something he didn’t understand and shook the tie angrily.

“
Stop that!” James barked. “I don’t know what you’re saying!” He slapped the woman’s hand and pushed her aside angrily. He stepped into the hallway, and said, “I don’t have time for this!”

But he couldn’t help wondering: what was the family doing before the car arrived? Watching television? Eating ice cream? Playing video games?

Damn
. This wasn’t fair and he knew it.

James took a deep breath and coughed.

Then he thought about Debra. He loved her so much, maybe too much. He thought she was beautiful; he thought she was fun, and he wished they were together. He believed––the way all foolish lovers do––that without her he couldn’t go on. He needed Debra to hold him, to love and comfort him. He needed the woman he had fallen in love with now, in this, his time of need, to make things better.

I wish I were lying next to you, he thought. I love you and I need you more than you’ll ever know. You complete me.

He heard a child scream.

And on the heels of that, the car exploded.

22

Debra’s hangover came in throbbing waves of sickness. She mumbled, “My brain is killing me.” Then she wondered if she was alone. Looking over her shoulder, she found the other half of the bed empty.

Praise Allah for small miracles.

After a minor struggle with her anally pleated sheets, she got out of bed and ran her fingers through her steel-wool hair. She pushed her drooping chest out and made dirty-girl faces in the mirror. This usually invoked a smile but today her heart wasn’t in it. The veins in her pale breasts seemed more noticeable this morning; Debra looked and felt like shit.

There was a low-cut shirt on the floor. She pulled it over her skin and made her way to the kitchen. She drank a glass of water and popped a couple Tylenols.

More memories came:

She took a cab home with friends. Her friends came inside. They listened to house music, had a couple drinks of whatever was in the liquor cabinet, and hooked up with her dealer. (The dealer was a guy named Gary she nailed more times than she cared to remember.) They cranked a few lines of ketamine and Gary invited some friends over.

And then…?

Debra turned the kettle on and stepped into the living room, expecting a sleeping body on the couch. The couch was empty but the coffee table was a different story. It was loaded with beer cans, wine glasses, tumblers, ashtrays, cigarette butts, remnants of powder and assorted rubbish that included everything from eyeliner pencils and lipstick, to an eight-inch ribbed dildo.

“
Huh.” She said, rubbing her eyes with her fingers. The aftermath of girls-night was always interesting.

The kettle screeched and Debra turned it off. She made tea, sat on the couch, and pushed her feet into the heart of the mess. With the push of a button she turned on the television. Her fingers tapped the controller. Tap; tap; tap. She lifted a pencil from the table, put it into her mouth and nibbled on the end. She flipped channels until she found Dr. Phil talking to a girl that had run away from home to become a prostitute. The girl was saying she loved getting attention and hated her parents. Dr. Phil was saying she needed to get her act together.

Debra could relate with the girl.

Tap; tap; tap. After twenty minutes, Debra finished her tea, turned off the TV and returned to bed.

Two minutes later the phone rang.

“
Hello?”

“
Hi Debra. This is Anne.”

23

After the explosion, James was on his hands and knees, disoriented. His white dress shirt hung from his body, black with dirt and ash. His tie sat low, resting in a pile of rubble. His hair was ashen with powder and his eyes were thick with dirt. The car was on fire and the heat was unquestionable, six hundred degrees and rising. Black smoke filled the air like smog over Los Angeles.

James endured a long bout of coughing and pulled himself to his knees. Sound had become a constant ring, like a chiming bell that wouldn’t fade. And there was something inside that sound, a noise of some type hidden beneath the ringing.

He coughed again, tasting filth and blood. But what about that sound, he wondered. Was a phone ringing? Was it the fire? Was it a siren?

The fire was loud, but no, that wasn’t it. This sound cut through the fire. It was a high-pitched noise, different than everything else, an unrefined echo. It sounded like screaming.

No—

It
was
screaming.

The family was burning.

James had been standing inside the hallway when the explosion occurred and the walls had protected him. But the family was standing at the doorway and now they were paying for it. Now they were ablaze.

A dancing inferno of arms and legs could be seen: a head swaying, feet kicking, hands grabbing at nothing. It was the woman. She was alive and burning, burning and screaming.

And the boys, where were they?

The youngest boy was lying face up on the floor. His legs were in flames and a huge chunk of metal impaled his chest. Along the side of his nose the gray matter from his brain oozed, producing a small mound near his upper lip. The other boy was missing entirely. James wondered if he had escaped but he knew it was unlikely. He was probably lying on the floor, buried in the rubble.

I need to get out of here, James reminded himself. The temperature was increasing and the flames were expanding. Plus the smoke was getting thicker, blacker. Deadlier.

He pulled himself to his feet.

The burning woman fell against the wall, twitching and screeching. Her mouth opened and closed as she hit the floor. Fingers curled and legs contracted. Her dress opened, exposing the bubbling skin beneath the flames on her chest.

James turned away. The image was madness but the grilled, barbequed stench was worse. It made him feel nauseous and revolted at the same time.
There’s nothing I can do for the woman
, he thought. And he was right. He was in no position to help, not while the blaze was eating the walls and broiling him alive. He was right about another thing too: he needed to get out of the house.

Avoiding the flames, James placed his hands on the shredded drywall, which was plagued with many holes. Some of the holes were big enough to crawl through. Others were like bullet holes.

I’m in a hallway, James thought. Follow the walls… find my way out.

James stumbled away from the room. The smoke thinned and the heat dissipated. He staggered past a pile of rubble, a box filled with plastic toys, and a small table with a rotary phone on it. He walked past a family portrait, a messy stack of newspapers and a closet. He found a doorway that led to the kitchen and heard a child crying.

That sounds like a baby, he thought. Someone is in here.

He dismissed the baby’s cry (
But why? That’s not like me…
) and kept moving.

On the other side of the room was a pile of shoes, a long rack of coats and jackets, and a doorway that led outside.

“
Safe at last,” James whispered. But he was wrong. Dead wrong.

The day had just begun.

24

As James made his way into the front yard a man in his late forties with grey hair and brilliant green eyes came running. The man ran gracelessly, like it had been awhile since he moved with any urgency. His feet dragged against the pavement. His arms flopped around like they were made of rubber.

“
Are you alright?” Green-eyes said. He put a hand on his chest and swallowed a huge breath; he was panting and wheezing.

James nodded.

Green-eyes continued battling for air. “That family,” he said. “The family with the five children, oh dear Lord, they’re not in there, are they? Are they? Please tell me they’re not inside the house!”

James turned away; he thought about the baby. But he had nothing for this man––nothing to give, nothing to say. He considered running down the street.

“
The children!” Green-eyes barked angrily. He knocked his heels against the ground and swallowed his gum. “Who do you think you are? Don’t you care about anything? Can’t you see that the house is––”

“
I don’t know!” James interrupted rudely. “I don’t know what to tell you, mister. I’m sorry!”

“
But… my God, son, what happened? This isn’t right! What were you thinking? What did you do, drive into the house at full speed? Were you alone? Are you high on drugs? Talk to me son, talk to me!”

James looked away from Green-eyes, having grown tired of his bickering and questioning. He lowered his head and noticed that his shoes, which had been purchased three days earlier, had smoke drifting from the toes. They looked almost comical: it was the amazing adventures of Smokey the Shoe and his sidekick Puff.

Still ignoring the man, James suffered another bout of coughing—six in a row. When he finished his throat felt raw and his eyes burned. He glanced into the heart of the fire. The car was blazing. It looked like someone had thrown a giant fireball through the front door of the house.

Green-eyes moaned. He was completely distraught.

Finally James said, “Go into the backyard. Go inside the house, break the windows if you must, but get inside. If anyone’s alive they’re ‘round back. The front of the house is finished. Trust me, there’s nothing you can do around front.”

Green-eyes had his feet glued to the ground. He didn’t understand the command. He didn’t understand that
he
was the one that needed to look inside the inferno. The lives of the children were resting on
him
now.

“
But the fire…”

“
Go!” James demanded. “Go now, dammit! Before it’s too late! Shit man… look for survivors, people are dying, children are dying. Get them out of there!”

“
But—”

“
But nothing! I can’t do it! I’m wounded!”

James coughed again. This time he faked it, demonstrating that he was in no condition to play hero.

Green-eyes rubbed a hand across his face and scurried around in a broken loop. “Oh damn!” he said, putting a finger against his temple. “Oh shit, mister! Oh shit! You really want me to go back there? Oh man! Do I hafta?”

Reluctantly the man ran up the driveway and disappeared into the backyard. As he did this, the first of several fire trucks came down the street with sirens blaring. It wouldn’t be long until the police arrived.

James lowered his head and assembled his thoughts.

This is a sticky moment, he thought. How do I explain this one?

25

Shuffling her fat, pastel-white body across the road in an overly frayed nightdress, was a woman named Tina Comfrey. “What happened?” she asked. “A fire?”

James nodded.

“
That looks like a car in there. You the driver or somethin’?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Whatcha do?”

James didn’t want to talk because––what could he say? There was a gremlin gnawing at my leg and I lost control of the car, sorry for the inconvenience? And if not that, what? What lie could he sell? His car was on fire, forty-five feet from where he was standing.

“
I don’t know what happened,” James mumbled. “Guess I lost control.”

“
Should pay more attention,” Tina said with an ugly smirk. Then her attitude changed. “This is total bullshit, you know. Total bullshit. Drivers like you, I always say. You’re the reason my insurance bill is bad. Guys like you, driving around the town like maniacs. You shouldn’t have a license in the first place. If people like you weren’t allowed to drive it’d be one safe country. Mark my words. It would be safe. Fucking asshole drivers are making things tough for the working class, every fuckin’ time. You fuck-knucklers should be lined up and shot. You should have your eyes pulled from your head.”

“
You don’t understand.”

“
Bullshit. You’re a crappy driver… probably the worst driver around. How many accidents have you been in? Be honest now, Sunshine… three? Four? You’re a fuck-knuckler and you shouldn’t have a license. The proof is in the puddin’, honey. The proof is right there, burning down my friggin’ neighborhood.”

Tina pulled a tissue from her tattered handbag and foolishly, James thought it was for him. It wasn’t. Tina blew her nose, licked her lips sloppily, and eyeballed the excrement. Then she tucked the rag into the folds of her purse and waited for James to say something. When he kept quiet she called him a fuck-knuckler again and spat on the ground near his feet.