Last Rites (19 page)

Lou had gotten up from his third gut-smashing of the day. As he posed with some children for a picture, men and women sauntered back to Truman’s cage. He answered some questions as Dalia collected their money and hawked the novelty to the crowd. With her usual yellow dress, she now wore a little black bowler and carried a bamboo stick, to complete the look of the impresario or hawker. Truman also noticed she’d gotten new, shiny, black leather boots, and that filled him with pride that he’d helped procure them.

“Come on, folks,” she shouted. “The Professor will answer all your questions. You pick from all these books, all these hard questions, and we check the Professor’s answer. No fooling around! You’ll be amazed! The smartest zombie on earth!” Truman forgave her the derogatory label. The people expected it, and besides—it didn’t even sound so bad when she said it.

After a while, the women and children left, as new men filtered into the tent for Ramona’s show. They were more drunk and smelly than the previous crowd. Most didn’t even pay to ask Truman questions, but just taunted him. One man did finally step up and give Dalia the required fee. He was a little shorter than Truman, but broad, well-fed and muscled, with taut skin and angular features. Truman immediately hated him a bit more than the others. He wasn’t even as loud and abusive as some, necessarily, but something about him had that special confidence and arrogance the living—especially men, and especially younger men—so often had. It was that empty, reflexive vanity that came from no more remarkable accomplishment than being alive, that monumental self-assuredness that would never consider or blink at its own obvious fallibility and ignorance. That was the sort of man who faced Truman, and even if he were here primarily to see Ramona put herself through much worse degradations, and even if Truman’s act could make Dalia some money, Truman still took the man’s easy, affable grin as the most personal affront imaginable.

“Okay, mister,” Dalia said to him. “You can pick any of these books. We have lots. Pick a question, any question.”

The arrogant man looked to his friends, laughing and joking with them as he picked a question. When Truman looked at his choice, however, he remembered the side-angle-side postulate, and Dalia got to keep the man’s money. He laughed and shook his head as his friends egged him on. Truman could tell he was trying to play the big sport. Truman didn’t doubt for a minute he’d give Dalia more money. Good for her. As Truman looked at the next question, he thought he might have to put the dunce cap on, but was mightily glad that he guessed correctly on the question about mitosis. He risked a little combination of a snarl and a smile at the expense of the man, who seemed much less easygoing this time as he shoved more money into Dalia’s hands and grabbed up another book.

The man finished off a brown bottle of the foul smelling beer as he looked over the potential questions. He dropped the bottle on the ground, taking more time than before to find the question he wanted to ask.

“There!” he said, an extra note of triumph added on top of his normal tone of presumption and entitlement. “Ha! I know that one. Most people don’t!”

He handed the book to Dalia, who held it up to Truman. He looked at the question she was pointing at. Truman was surprised, as the other two had been much harder and required some thought. This one seemed pretty simple, and he wondered if the man were trying to trick him somehow. But all he could do was point at the answer he knew was correct this time.

The man looked over the top of the book to see his answer. “Ha!” he said. “See! He’s not so smart!”

Dalia brought the book down and turned to the answers in the back. “No, mister,” she said. “The Professor’s right!”

“What? Give me that!” He looked at the contradictory evidence on the page, his face going crimson. “Trenton’s not the capital of New Jersey! I was born in New Jersey! It’s Newark!”

“Sorry, mister,” Dalia said, casting a sideways smile at Truman. “It’s been a long time. You must’ve forgot.” The man’s friends loved that, punching his shoulder and teasing him.

“I didn’t fucking forget, kid. That isn’t right.”

“The answer’s in the book. We have to play by the rules. We follow the answer in the book. If you want to pay for another question, you can ask one.”

“I don’t want to ask this stupid fucker another question!” the man said as he threw the book down on the ground and kicked at it. He got up closer to the bars of Truman’s cage. “How do you do it? It’s a trick. He doesn’t know anything. None of them do. They can’t. They’re all messed up.”

Truman stared back at him. He didn’t snarl or even glare this time, but let the man’s friends work him to a further fury with their jeers, as they slapped him on the back and said he was dumber than a zombie, that maybe when he died he could be smart like one of them, or maybe he’d just get even stupider. Truman relished the moment.

The man pointed at Truman. “If you were out here, you sorry piece of shit, I’d snap your stupid faggot neck.”

Of course he would. He was big enough and strong enough to do so, and drunk and barbaric enough to want to. But Truman wasn’t out there now, was he? And the man was way too drunk to be making dumb-ass threats. And way too alive. He should realize in this world that being alive was not something to brag about, but a fragile liability that only a very few could hold on to, and then, only with the kind of enormous expense and sacrifice that a buffoon like this would never appreciate or understand. Truman tensed and thought how someone should remind him, in fact, of all those inconvenient truths.

“Don’t talk that way to the Professor, mister,” Dalia said with an unusual sharpness. “And keep away from his cage. I don’t think he likes that.”

As Truman lunged, he still wasn’t sure anything would come of it, since the man was so powerfully built. But he didn’t really care about the outcome. About all Truman could accomplish in his pathetic existence now was to surprise people like this with something their dim, selfish minds couldn’t comprehend or expect. That was his only meager satisfaction, but the shock and horror on the man’s face as Truman grabbed him with both hands made such satisfaction seem not at all paltry. Truman got a hold of the man’s thick, hairy arm, twisting and yanking it back into his cage. Truman had enough advantage from the leverage and surprise of the attack that the man fell forward and slammed his face into the bars as Truman pulled him off balance.

They started to struggle, and the man nearly wriggled out of Truman’s grasp, but with a roar, Truman threw himself into it, pushing the man’s elbow back the wrong way. This drove him to his knees, howling in pain. Truman held his open mouth right next to his forearm. It stank. The other men banged on the cage, trying to help their companion, but what could they do? None of them dared stick their arms inside, lest they be grabbed and bitten instead. The man’s whimpering and blubbering made Truman hate him more, made him long to release all his frustration and humiliation, to burn it into this idiot’s mind, to rend his healthy, vibrant flesh and tear it away from such an undeserving soul. But Truman wavered, as he imagined the prospect of defiling himself with the blood of such a disgusting simpleton.

Then he felt the tiny hand on his shoulder, its grip so firm and resolute. So accusatory, too, in its smallness and fearlessness.

“Don’t, Professor,” he heard Dalia say beside him. “You be nice and let this man go. You do that or I won’t be your friend anymore.”

Truman only hesitated a moment after that, before shoving the arm back out between the bars. He nodded to Dalia as Doctor Jack and some other assistants pushed their way through the crowd.

The man Truman had attacked rubbed his arm and pointed at him. “That fucker attacked me!” he shouted. “I want him put down!”

“Now, now,” Doctor Jack said. “I’m sure there’s been some misunderstanding. Dalia—what happened?”

She scowled and pointed at the man. “That man said we cheated. He called the Professor bad names. He got up in his face, and I told him not to. Then the Professor grabbed him, but I told him to let go and he did. The Professor listens to me—not like you, you big, mean dummy! You’re just jealous ‘cause he’s smarter and nicer than you are!”

“Now, see, a misunderstanding,” Doctor Jack said, coming between Dalia and the men. “You boys failed to follow the instructions of a show employee, and that got you in some trouble. But now everything’s fine.”

The man rubbed his elbow. “Hey—I was in school to be a lawyer. You can’t get away with this. That thing’s dangerous.”

Doctor Jack laughed. “Oh my God—a lawyer! What the fuck does that matter, you dumb ass? Besides saying you were a politician or you liked little boys, is there anyone you could’ve thought of that people would feel less sorry for, anybody they’d rather see eaten by a zombie? Lawyer! You boys get along. You’re outside city walls and I’ve got a business to run and we don’t want any more of your commotion. Now get!”

The men went off—grumbling, shouting intermittently, but they went. Doctor Jack turned back to Dalia. “You did really good, dear. I’m very proud of you,” he said in as tender a tone as Truman had heard from him. Then he turned to Truman. “And you, sir, are in for a long night tomorrow. We’re gonna set things up special, and show people we know how to teach our zombies right. Now, Dalia, you gather up your stuff and run along. We can’t have you around when Miss Ramona does her thing.”

As Doctor Jack and the others walked away, Dalia slipped her hand into Truman’s. “You shouldn’t have done that, Professor,” she said, her face very serious. “They’re gonna hurt you so bad tomorrow, and I can’t do anything about that. Please don’t be mad at me. I wish you hadn’t done that.”

Truman leaned close to the bars. “S’okay,” he said in a sighing whisper that could almost be mistaken for an exhalation of breath, by someone not as wise and discerning as this child. But as Dalia’s eyes widened, he knew she understood—understood there was much more than even she’d seen, and understood that he trusted her with his secret. Truman understood something then, too—that surprising these living people could sometimes be as beautiful as it was exhilarating. Dalia slipped her hand from his and backed slowly away, a look of the purest, most sublime awe shining from her face.

“Isn’t that some shit?” Garrett said as the four of them looked into the pit. Three zombies were down there, impaled on sticks. They obviously couldn’t move, but their moaning had caused Garrett to stop the wagon to investigate. All of them had on weird striped shirts. Will remembered cartoons when he was little, where men in jail wore shirts like that, as they ran around with big black balls chained to their ankles. It was all funny back then. “What the hell happened to these fuckers?”

“Somebody didn’t like the City Patrol taking back the truck stop yesterday,” Mike said.

“Yeah, but a pit trap? Now we’ll have to fill out a report when we get back. That’s something serious.” Garrett got a can off the side of the wagon. It was a small, rectangular can with a nozzle at the top, so if you tipped it up and squeezed it, the liquid inside would shoot out. Garrett started squirting the contents all over the dead men. The stinging scent of lighter fluid filled Will’s nose. The smell made him wince nearly as much as the dead men did, as the liquid hit them in their eyes and mouths. They spit and gurgled and tried to thrash free, but remained stuck. The best they could do was swat at the stream of liquid. Their pathetic gestures made the other men chuckle. Will looked away.

Garrett put the can back. “Well, on behalf of the city of New Sparta, we’d like to thank you boys for your service,” he said. Will heard the strike of a match. “Now, we’d love to give you all a Christian burial, but today it’s looking more like it’s gonna be a barbecue.” More chuckles, then there was the whoosh of the flames and Will could feel the heat on his neck and the side of his face. The moans increased in pitch and volume, then subsided.

Garrett led the others around the side of the wagon. “All right, Jake,” he said. “You drive alongside us. We’ll walk in there, real careful. Don’t want the horses falling into anything like this. Keep your eyes open, boys.”

They proceeded toward the ruined truck stop, the four men walking alongside the horses as they pulled the wagon. Will didn’t feel too frightened of what the dead might do. He just didn’t know how many more scenes like the one he’d just witnessed he could stand.

“Damn, boy, what a mess,” Garrett said as they stopped. Jake climbed from the cab and they all inspected the carnage from a distance. There were bodies all over the place by the fuel pumps, most of them naked and emaciated, a few wearing the striped shirts. Some still clutched filthy weapons. The building’s windows were smashed out, and the only sound was the scraping of some blinds against the window frames.

“Don’t get close to the building or the pumps,” Garrett said. “No sense risking it. Too many places for them to hide. The caps to the tanks are out here somewhere. Look for them.” He turned to Will. “You—F.N.G.—get the rifle out of the back and keep an eye on the trees and the building. We’ll get the fuel.”

“Ha—now you’re the ‘fucking new guy,’” Chris laughed. “It’s been me for weeks.”

“Yeah, and before that it was some other dumb ass who couldn’t keep quiet,” Garrett said as he started kicking and poking in the grass. “So shush.”

Will got the M4 out and stood near the wagon. Everything looked deserted. Maybe the rest of this trip would go smoothly and uneventfully.

“Here,” said Garrett, as he pulled the weeds aside to uncover the metal caps to the fuel tanks underneath. “Get the hoses and jerry cans.”