ZWD: King of an Empty City (34 page)

ZWD: King of an Empty City Chapter 31

ZWD: Dec. 24.

WE ARE HERE!

The wind had gotten colder as the night fell. I was still conflicted about what had happened earlier in the day, so I left Jr., Jamie, and my girl on the roof to their own devices and went for a walk. I needed to think, to reevaluate everything. Had we come to a place where good people had to kill bad people to make the world a better place? And did that make the good people who killed them, did that make us, bad? These kinds of moral questions were going around in my head and I decided I needed to just do some mindless things to get me out of this mindset. After all, I had a party to go to tonight, a party I was hosting.

              I thought about doing some mindless zombie killing, but as I walked along looking at houses, I kept seeing the S.O.L. or its inverse painted on the walls, telling me this house was occupied or unoccupied and they’d cleared it. I probably walked for an hour covering two miles, threading my way up one street and down another. Everywhere I looked there was the S.O.L. symbol. I had to give it to Eddie and Donny, give them a goal and they took off with it. Their teams were moving through the neighborhood quickly.

              I finally gave up on trying to find a house that didn’t have the S.O.L. on it and headed over to the alarm house. If the capacitor were still whining there’d be zombies there to kill. Along the way, I ran across a team of kids who’d been out clearing houses. We talked a little and they told me they’d been out all day. They were headed back to Trinity and would be at the party. They were very upbeat and it did my spirit some good.

              At the alarm house there were a lot of dead bodies lying around. When I got to the house next door, where the last of the students were wrapping up a day of training, I found out that the capacitor had wound down about an hour before. Alfonzo, one of the trainers, a kid I’d seen while clearing Paris Towers, told me he thought this group would be going out to start clearing houses the day after tomorrow. He said this would be his fifth class to graduate from training.

             
“Have any of the adults from Paris Towers been here to train?”

“No, not while I’ve been around. But I’m not the only trainer.”

“Who else trains fighters?”

“Joseph, for one, then there’s Keith.”

“Keith?”

“Yeah, you know, he had that tight fade up to a Mohawk. But now it’s all nappy and going Afro.”

I knew exactly who he was talking about. Keith was a barrel-chested kid with the skinniest arms and legs I’d ever seen sticking out of a torso. But watching him kill zombies was like seeing a transformation. He became a graceful killing machine. He was smooth and quick, no wasted motion. Keith seemed to be always laughing or smiling and his favorite word was “praise.” I’d have to talk to Keith and Joseph tonight about my bathroom buddy from Paris Towers and find out if he’d done any training.

             
This brought me back to my original moral dilemma, should good people kill bad people when they know they’re bad, and does that then make the good person bad? I knew I was going to have to do something about my new bathroom friend; I just didn’t know if I could kill him.

             
I left Keith to close up the house and I walked on again, thinking about these questions. I traveled back north and found myself at the Mount Holly Cemetery in front of Steve’s skull. Earlier, Eddie had sent someone to collect it and ready it for its present home here among the stack of skulls that lined what was being called “Heroes’ Wall.” I fished out a grape Swisher Sweet cigar from my pocket and lit it. I didn’t feel like I could talk to Steve, so I talked to the stone angel that watched over “Heroes’ Wall.” As usual the angel didn’t answer me, but with polite silence, it listened to everything I had to say, then left me with no advice and no answers. Right now, I could really use Dylan and Stager popping into my head and telling me what to do, but those bastards were nowhere around either.

             
I headed back to Trinity and did a quick clean up, then searched out my girl in the many rooms of the building complex. I found her with Jamie and Bobby in an office getting ready. She looked fantastic. When I walked into the room she had her back to me, and when the two girls looked up she turned to face me like a supermodel. Though still wearing her boots, she now had on leather pants, a long teal turtleneck sweater, and a black leather jacket. Her belt was still covered in knives and she had a machete on her hip and Ice Pike close to hand. She looked like a high-fashion warrior princess.

             
She’d been standing over Bobby helping her with her makeup but when she saw me, she walked over and kissed me.

“Wow, you clean up real good.” She winked at me. “Belle of the ball, baby,” I said. We kissed again.

“Did you get worked out what you needed to get worked out?” she asked.

“Not completely. Listen, tonight I’m going to call a meeting with several of the guys. I don’t want you to be a part of it.”

She looked up at me questioningly and I just shook my head. “It will help work out the things in my head. We have to deal with this black truck guy tonight and I just don’t want you to be a part of it.”

She had her palms resting on my chest. With her right hand she slid her fingers into my long, scruffy beard and looking into my eyes she whispered, “Ok.”

             
We talked a little more about nothing important and I excused myself to go get ready. I asked her to have everyone ready to go in an hour, to be lined up at the south doors ready for the parade. Then I went down to the locker room and stripped out of my clothes and showered again. I grabbed a pair of clippers then trimmed my beard down to a fashionable, less wild-man-from-Borneo look. Actually, I thought it made me look a little like Hemingway. My wiry hair I brushed down over my face, then bent over and took a pair of scissors and clipped a straight line across it, leaving about four inches on the floor. When I flipped my hair back over my head, I had a nice straight line of hair just skimming my shoulders. I pulled it back into a ponytail and tied it. Humming all the while, I grabbed a new clean shirt and jeans, splashed on cologne, slipped into a sports jacket, strapped on my weapons belt, and hitched Harold over my shoulder, pleased with myself.

             
When I got to the hall, there were a lot of people lined up, singly and in groups. Couples mingled and talked. All were dressed in their current finest. We marched out of the building in a loose parade and I believe we cut a fine sight, some forty people dressed up and brandishing weapons walking in a line down the street. We left Trinity Episcopal Church and marched down Spring Street. Everyone was laughing and joking till we got next to the governor’s mansion, then we all fell silent and walked past it as quickly as we could. We’d have to deal with that place very soon. On Twentieth Street, we turned right and traveled two blocks to the Faith Temple Missionary Baptist Church on Broadway.

             
Joseph was waiting for us at the door. The girl I’d seen him with earlier in the day stood just inside the door. Joseph was, as always, immaculate. He had on a black three-piece suit and his shoes were shined like mirrors. He had a gold chain around his neck with a large cross hanging down. And as usual, his hair was clipped close to his scalp and his beard was sculpted to hairline fineness.

His girlfriend was passing out glow sticks and glow bracelets, toy bubble blowers, party poppers, strings of beads, rubber ducks, unfilled balloons, bags of small plastic toy soldiers and stuffed animals, horns and noisemakers, and any other kind of cheap New-Year’s-Eve-type party favor they could scrounge up as people filed in.

             
I led the procession into the darkened cafetorium. Then I walked to the center of the room. On the far side was the stage and a dim light revealed a pile of equipment silhouetted to the side. A small figure stood there and flicked a switch that threw a spotlight on me as everyone gathered into the large room. As people formed in a loose circle around me, I noted that Joseph and Jr. had lined the sides of each wall with tables and chairs, providing a nice area for people to sit down. When I thought most of them were in the room, I held up my hand and Roland darted out of the shadows, handing me a microphone, then darted back into the shadows and back to the stage.

             
“Welcome to the Apocalypse After-Party!” I exclaimed and got a round of
Wooos
from the crowd. “It has been months of struggle, but we are here. We’ve all lost someone near and dear to us, but we are here. We’ve struggled and scavenged for food,
but we are here
.”  A few people in the crowd caught on and chimed in on the last bit.

“We’ve fought the elements at their harshest,
but we are here
.” A larger group of people joined in on the chorus at this point.

“We—we’ve fought zombies one on one and in large groups,
but we are here
.” More people shouted with me.

“WE HAVE FACED BAD PEOPLE WHO WANT TO HURT US, BUT,” I held the mike out to the crowd and they responded in unison, “WE ARE HERE!”

“And don’t you forget it,” I reminded them to a round of applause. “Most of you are kids, you should be playing ball and making out in the back of cars.”

              Someone from the crowd shouted, “What makes you think we aren’t?”

“God, I hope you are. If not, I’d be worried. But you all have been asked to grow up very fast. I’m very proud of what you’ve done and where you are. It’s amazing, truly amazing. So tonight, we celebrate how far we’ve come and how far we’re going. TODAY, WE. ARE. HERE! Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die. BUT TONIGHT WE. ARE. HERE!”

              On cue everyone joined in after I shouted “tonight” and as they finished the phrase, the spotlight that shone on me shifted up, striking a mirrored disco ball, and the floor began to vibrate with a heavy bass beat. Then the words of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Higher” broke out of the stack of speakers from the stage.

There was a round of laughter and applause, and then people started dancing. I beckoned my girl over to me and we danced. We danced among glow sticks and party horns. We danced for two or three songs, then I had to have some water, so we left the floor and after drinking a bottle, I went to find Joseph.

              I wanted to make certain that the guards we’d posted around the neighborhood were well armed and rotated often. I didn’t want the cold to get to them and I especially didn’t want anyone to miss out on the party.

              My days of partying when I was in college and what these kids had in mind as a good time were two very different things, it seemed to me. We had no alcohol to speak of, no drugs, but there seemed to be a wilder, more uninhibited feel to the way these kids were burning off months of pent-up energy. I’d thought about trying to control it, but hell, they deserved to let go. I kept up a survey of the room and saw some people from the neighborhood come in, mostly adults, and join in the celebration. Lights flashed, bubbles filled the air. The music had changed from the stuff I’d brought to newer music I’d never heard before. Good, they were making the party their party.

              When I saw Shaun and his family come in, I took a quick mental check as to where my key people were and saw that everyone was here.             

              Probably two hours into the party, I got on stage and made a tribute to Steve and the other fallen, then led the crowd in a ribald round of his favorite song, Garth Brooks’ ”Friends in Low Places.” I wished I could remember what I said to them. All I know is I tried to keep it short and upbeat. Roland was smart and with me on this, because as I talked he played the song in the background and when it got to the chorus, I just started singing along with it and encouraged everyone to join in. To my surprise, when the song was over everyone shouted, “WE ARE HERE.”

                We’d just come off the dance floor again when I saw my bathroom buddy from Paris Towers standing in the doorway of the cafetorium. It took me a few minutes to gather everyone, but I eventually had Eddie, Donny, Shaun, Uncle Andrew, Joseph, and Keith with me. We’d gathered in an office at the end of a hallway. The room was small and cramped as we stood around the giant desk that took up most of the space. Behind the desk was a picture of Jesus kneeling at a rock praying as beams of light rested on his shoulders. There was a desk lamp and an overhead florescent strip. As everyone settled down in the room, I went over with them everything that had happened that day. The photograph with the men from the black truck lay on the desk as I told them about killing Danny, Patrick’s son. Then, they all looked at the photos from the shoebox as I told of the assassinations of James, Patrick, and the man with the tattoo on his neck.

“So we still have three out there somewhere,” stated Shaun.

“One of them is at the party tonight,” I said and told them how he tried to reach out to me in the Paris Towers bathroom.

“Hell, let’s go get this guy,” said Donny, standing up.

“We don’t need to get rowdy at no party, not tonight,” cautioned Uncle Andrew.

“You got something in mind, Uncle Andrew?” asked Eddie.