Demise of the Living (5 page)

Supported by his good
hand, Grant showed his mother his wound. Just below the pinkie on
the very edge of his palm was a perforated crescent of red. It was
unmistakably a bite mark.

“Okay, honey,” Liz said, taking
a deep breath. She swept a blood-stained hand through her hair.
“Okay, I’m going to put a bandage on it from the first aid
kit.”

Grant’s bottom lip
trembled.

“There's a hospital not far
from here, I’m sure. I'll take you there and the doctors can make
it all better. Okay?”

Liz nodded to elicit her son’s
agreement.

Grant looked like he was about
to burst into tears, but he gave his mother a nod back.

“Ma, I’m scared,” Melissa
said.

Liz put a hand to her mouth and
snatched a breath. She wanted to reassure her children, tell them
everything would be okay. But she couldn’t summon the lie.

She bit her bottom lip before
saying, “I’ll take care of you, my babies. I’ll take care of
you.”

***

“Nate!” Shan screeched.

“
Face it: he’s not in,”
Karen said.

Shan was still red-faced from
bellowing. “Where the fuck would he be at this time of the morning?
More likely he’s still passed out from blow and drinking tops with
his dick-weed crew.”

“I don't know. One of them
would have been woken up by now. I just don’t think he’s in,” Karen
said defensively.

“The fucker’s gone and hooked
up with Brodie! That’s where he is—still at her place, the dirty
whore.”

“
What? Brodie’s not like
that. Anyway, she’s seeing Mark,” Karen said.

“
Mark’s a dick.” Shan
looked down at the phone in Karen's hand. “Call him
again.”

“
I’ve tried four times.
The signal’s dead.”

“
Just phone him,” Shan
demanded.

“
I’m not wasting all my
credit on calling your boyfriend.
You
phone him.”

Shan pulled a face and replied,
“Very funny.”

Karen looked down at the
phone’s screen. The signal symbol had a diagonal slash through its
bars. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and followed her
friend.

“Look, why hasn’t Nate’s Gran
answered the door?” Karen asked, trying to deflect Shan.

Shan snorted, “I don't
know. She’s half deaf or out at that day-care thing.”

“This early?”

“What you looking at, you
fucking old pedo!” Shan suddenly blurted.

Karen turned to see an elderly
man in a housecoat and slippers shuffling his way down the
street.

“
He looks lost,” Karen
said, watching the plaintive figure.

“I’m going round the back.”
Shan turned and marched off.

Karen watched for a moment as
the old man struggled onwards. He was moving at a painfully slow
speed towards them, his head cocked at a slight angle, his mouth
hanging open.

“Creepy,” Karen said.

She turned and followed her
friend.

“
What you doing?” she
asked, catching up with Shan.

Shan was on her haunches
by some flower-filled planters at the back door. She tipped one
back and swept her hand under the earthenware pot.

“Sorted.” She placed the pot
back down and stood up, holding a stubby brass key aloft. She
explained, “Nate said he had a spare key back here in case his Gran
locked herself in.”

“
Should we? I
mean
, isn’t this breaking and
entering?”

“
No one’s breaking
anything,” Shan said, slipping the key into the lock. “Besides, we
have permission.”

“No we don’t,” Karen
protested.

“If Nate didn’t want me to use
the key he would never have told me about it, now would he?”

Shan pushed the door open.

Karen looked around to check if
anyone was watching, then scurried in behind Shan.

Even though the summer sun was
beaming down and the day was starting to warm up, the house felt
dank and gloomy. There was a smell to Nate’s Gran’s house, an old,
musty smell mixed with cigarette smoke and festering urine.

Shan padded silently through
the kitchen. Unwashed dishes were piled up next to the sink, mainly
coffee mugs and spoons.

Slowly she pulled the
door open. It creaked on its hinges and Shan slowed her pulling to
reduce the noise.

“
If
,” Karen began in an overly
loud voice, “we’re allowed to be here, why are we sneaking
about?”

Shan glared at her.
“Fine,” she said. “You’ll have woken the dead with your racket
anyway.”

She threw the door open
and waltzed into the hallway.

Karen closed the kitchen door
and stood for a moment, surveying the scene. There were no signs of
recent activity. She walked over to the refrigerator and looked
about for a note. There were some postcards and tacky magnetic
ornaments brought back from various holiday destinations. On the
wall was a calendar. There was a date circled with “Grans Dr appt
10.30am” written over it, but that was a full week away.

“Nate?” Karen heard Shan call
out from elsewhere in the house.

“Maybe his Gran took a turn.”
Karen suggested as she left the kitchen.

Shan was standing in the
hallway looking up the stairs.

“Nate?” Shan called, holding a
half empty packet of cigarettes.

When there was no response, she
turned and walked into the living room.

“Where’d you get those?” Karen
asked, looking at the cigarettes.

Shan nodded to the arm of a
chair that had a lighter and an ashtray perched on it.

“
Those are his
Gran’s
,”
Karen protested.

Shan popped the carton
open and plucked out one of the slender white sticks. “No one’s
complaining,” she said as she popped the cigarette into her mouth.
She held the pack out. “I take it you don’t want one
then?”

Karen did, but she didn’t want
to steal them from an old lady, so she shook her head.

“
Suit yourself,” Shan
said. She thrust the packet into the back pocket of her jeans and
picked up the lighter. With a click and a puff the cigarette was
lit and glowing brightly. “Ahh. That’s better.” She blew out the
lungful of smoke. “Now let’s see about a coffee.”

She turned and brushed
past Karen on her way to the kitchen. Like a lost puppy, Karen
followed her back into the hallway. Something about the empty house
made her uncomfortable. She stopped in the hall and looked up the
dark stairs. The house was deathly quiet, the only sounds coming
from Shan busying herself in the kitchen.

Karen looked out of the
opaque glass of the front door, then she spotted it: a brown
envelope with a curl of sticky tape lay by the skirting board near
the front door. She bent down and picked it up tugging away a light
strip of fluff from the carpet as she did.

“
Shan, look at this,”
Karen said, walking into the kitchen. “It must have been taped to
the front door and slipped off.”

Shan snatched the used
envelope from her hands. “Taken Gran to hospital. I’ll call when I
know more.”

“Would Nate have written that?”
Karen asked.

“
That’s Nate’s scrawl all
right. Looks like an invitation to make ourselves comfy.” Shan took
another long draw of her rapidly dwindling cigarette. She turned
and opened up the kitchen cupboard, “Bet we passed him on the way
here. You want a coffee?”

“Yeah, why not,” Karen
answered. She didn’t really want one, but at least it would give
them something to do until Nate got home.

She felt her shoulders relax.
Maybe Shan was right. Maybe Nate did want them to come into the
house. She felt more at ease having read the note; less like an
intruder, more like a guest.

“I’ll get the milk,” Karen
said, walking to the fridge.

“Not a single clean cup,” Shan
said, banging the cupboard door shut.

Karen opened the fridge and was
struck by the temperature. There was a waft of cool air, but not as
cold as she had expected and the light didn’t flick on.

“
Fridge is on the
blink,”
she said. She picked up the milk
carton and stuck her nose in the neck and took a deep sniff. “Milk
smells fine. Can’t have been off that long.”

Shan flicked the switch
on the wall socket up and down. “Shit. The power’s out.”

“No coffee then.”

Shan flicked the switch
up and down, as if by doing so she could pump a few watts of power
from the grid.

“
Fucked,” she said. She
turned to the door connecting to the garage. “Maybe Nate’s still
got a few brews in the garage.”

She opened the door and stepped
through.

“Will he mind?” Karen asked,
looking for an excuse to not start drinking so early in the
day.

“He’ll go ballistic,” Shan
replied, her voice echoing off the garage’s cold walls.

The garage wasn’t just a
workspace for Nate to tinker with his pickup or trail bikes. There
was an old sofa and two tables made from empty beer crates and
plywood. There was a paint-splattered ghetto blaster, a fat old
portable cathode ray TV, it’s black plastic casing cracked and
dented, wired into a DVD player, and an array of tools and spare
parts that might come in handy one day. This was the gang’s bat
cave. Nate’s Grandmother owned the place, but she had no use for
the garage. She had no car and was too deaf to hear the rowdy
gatherings that spontaneously happened most weekends. She was also
too trusting or too senile to care what her grandson and his
friends were up to. They could play their music loud, smoke and
drink and do all the other forbidden things they couldn’t do under
their own parent’s roofs. As long as things didn’t get wild enough
for a neighbour to call the police, this place was Nirvana. Karen
pulled out her phone and slumped down on the sofa.

“
Still no reception,” she
said. There was the clink of glass as Shan searched for alcohol.
She moaned, “Just empties back here.”

She straightened up and turned
her attention to the shelves that ran along the back wall, trawling
for something. She put her hands on a green and white striped tin
and pulled it down. The lid twisted off easily.

“Savage!” Shan exclaimed,
fishing out a lump of something dark wrapped in cellophane.

“What have you found?” Karen
asked.

“Nate’s stash.”

“He’ll murder you for stealing
that,”

Shan pressed the play
button on the CD player. Harsh thumping industrial music roared to
life. She cupped her hand to her ear and smiled. “What?”

“He’ll kill us both for
totalling that.” Karen said, pressing down hard on the volume
button. “And how’s that music playing if the power’s off?”

Shan swayed her hips and
raised her hands over her head in a slow, seductive dance. Lowering
her hands she grabbed hold of the stereo and turned it around.
There was a strip of black duct tape slashed across the back.
Behind the tape was a stack of fat blue and silver batteries. She
made a hand gesture like a magician’s assistant showing off a trick
and then turned the stereo back round.

“
Here. Roll that,” Shan
said, tossing over the resin and a packet of skins.

Karen, caught unawares, fumbled
the catch and had to sweep the couch to find the cigarette
papers.

“
We
can’t
smoke his weed,”
Karen said.

“
He won’t mind. Anyway,
he owes me an eighth,” Shan replied, still dancing.

“What for?”

“
He just does. Now roll
one up. You do it neater than me.”

***

The door swung open and the
sound of laughter danced across the office. John flicked from his
web browser to the product matrix and looked up from his
screen.

Sharon, the department
head, was being ushered into the office by Stephen Flynn. Whatever
he had said to her on the way up, Sharon was enthralled with it.
Her normally harsh, angular face was broken up with a beaming
grin.

The department head smiled at
the new boy, silver thermos coffee mug in one hand a bulging
handbag in the other.

Stephen gallantly held the door
open for her, letting his boss squeeze past at an overly intimate
distance.

“Smarmy little shit,” John said
under his breath. “She’s old enough to be his mother.”

Stephen started as an office
temp less than a year ago. He had quickly been made permanent and
since then went up a pay grade. John hadn’t gone up a pay grade in
nine years. Now this little shit not long out of university was
being fast-tracked on the postgraduate program.

John had a degree. He’d spent
four years devoting his evenings to his correspondence course while
doing his ordinary day job. Unlike Stephen, John didn’t have rich
parents who could afford to pay for their son’s education. John had
had to work for everything he had.

“Good morning, Sharon,” John
said, more cheerily than he actually felt.

“Oh, morning, John. I didn’t
notice you there,” Sharon said.

“You’re in early, John,”
Stephen said.

“Well, it’s going to be a busy
quarter. Thought it best to get the jump on it.”

“Very good, John,” Sharon
said.

To John’s ears it sounded
snide.

“I’ll see you at the eleven
o’clock meeting,” Sharon added.

“Eleven?” John said.

“Not you, John,” Sharon said,
frowning.