Pariah (35 page)

“This is a real Kodak moment,” Alan said.

“True that,” agreed Eddie, as did the others whose hearts labored almost as hard as Karl’s.

“Okay,” Karl said to himself. “I can do this.” He looked up at the sky, which seemed bigger and bluer than it had on their roof, some four stories above. He was eye level with the Phnom Penh Laundromat
sign. A pigeon skeleton was nestled between the brick and the sign, a couple of feathers still clinging to the husk. Karl looked away from the tiny carcass to the larger, ambulatory ones at street level. “Oh Jesus,” he gasped. Several were looking in the direction of the van, attracted by the activity. “Oh sweet Jesus.”

“Lemme spread ’em out,” Mona said, hopping down onto the pavement.

With a soft thud, Mona hit the ground. The response from the zombies was almost instantaneous. They began to back away, their sibilant hissing more penetrating at this proximity. It was a sound that traveled up and down Karl’s spinal cord. It lingered, for emphasis, in the lower colon and upper throat, seizing and massaging both with dead, constricting fingers. He could feel liquid collecting beneath his Saran Wrap armor, the brine basting his wounds. His mother used to marinade roasts overnight in the fridge, bound in cling wrap. He hoped he wouldn’t prove to be as tasty to the uninvited guests below. With an iris opened in the crowd, Mona gestured for Karl to join her on the asphalt.
It’s now or never
, Karl thought. He released his grip on the rappelling rope and eased himself off the van, first sitting on the edge, then lowering his legs until they were straight, then dropping to Mona’s side. The zombies stayed at bay.

“So far so good,” he whispered.

“
Mm
.” Mona proceeded, noncommittal, taking a step north. Her pace was slow, deliberate—with Karl in tow, slower than usual. She gave the zombies plenty of time to soak up her mojo and make way. Without actually holding onto her, Karl kept close to Mona, walking just slightly behind her. He’d never been this near to the zombies before, and up close, they were even fouler. The countless iterations on the theme of decay were staggering. Some, obvious victims of carnivorous attacks, were little more than haphazard collections of stumps and gristle, barely held together and
yet still capable of locomotion. Limbs ended midway. Faces half consumed by rot—or just half consumed, period. Exposed bone. Internal organs that weren’t internal any longer. Karl never realized gums could recede so far. Their skin reminded Karl of overcooked fowl, matte, striated, thick and leathery yet translucent. Yellowed, browned, and blackened. Most eyes glazed by dull gray cataracts. Some stumbled around, sockets bereft of eyeballs. Cavernous nostrils, just vertical openings, black and rimmed with corrosion.

“They’re so horrible,” Karl stated. “They’re so fucking horrible.”

“I s’pose.” The response to a comment on the weather. Banal. But then again, zombies
were
the weather. A constant. Less interesting than the weather, actually. Weather changed. Karl’s walkie-talkie beeped and he removed it from its holster.

“Just testing,” came Alan’s voice. “How’s it going?”

“Uh, okay, I guess,” Karl said. “They’re hanging back, but it’s, uh, it’s kinda freaking me out, to be honest.”

“Of course,” Alan responded. “How could it not? But you’re out, buddy. You’re actually out there.”

Karl nodded in response, then snapped to and pressed the talk button. “Yeah, I’m out here. I’m out here. Look, I can’t walk and talk. I need to concentrate. Over.”

“Okay, Karl. Understood. Over and out.”

Karl clutched the walkie-talkie to his chest, a talismanic anchor to home. His face burned. They hadn’t even reached the corner and already he was hesitating. He looked back at the others, still in the windows. Ellen gave a very maternal wave of encouragement and Karl felt like he was back at his first day of school, Mom dropping him off, he being brave.
Don’t cry
, he thought.
Please don’t cry
.

As they headed north Karl gasped when a naked, hunched, gnomelike zombie edged into view. Its pigmentation was almost
human and it bore no disfigurements other than its stooped posture and deep livor mortis in its lower extremities. It cast its nearly hairless head in Karl’s direction and he gasped.
Ruth!
She must have fallen from the roof and come unwrapped. Karl stood motionless, staring at his former neighbor. Of all the people he never wanted to see naked, Ruth might be number one on the list. He thought of the late Norman Mailer,
The Naked and the Dead
.

“What’s the delay?” Mona asked, not impatient.

“It’s Ruth.” He pointed.

“Uh-huh.”

Karl suppressed that urge to chastise Mona. It wasn’t like he’d just pointed out that the sky was above or that water was wet. This was kind of a traumatic big thing, Ruth ambling around. She wasn’t bitten by one of those things. She just came back all on her own. Didn’t that portend the same fate for anyone? For everyone? Regardless? How would Abe feel knowing his wife was scuttling around in the raw amidst the unclean? Tidy, persnickety Ruth Fogelhut in her birthday suit—or would that be
deathday
suit—loose amongst the natives. It was an ugly sight made uglier. With not a trace of recognition, Ruth’s dead eyes glared in his direction as he felt Mona’s hand tug at his arm.

“C’mon,” she said.

Opting to not radio back this piece of info, Karl nodded and kept step with Mona, whose pace was deliberate, mechanical. She’d likely have made a fine soldier. Maybe she’d been one. Maybe she was some military experiment gone wrong. Or right. She was immune to the zombies. Maybe she was a supersoldier prototype. Maybe her creators were all dead. Or maybe they were still alive in some bunker, monitoring Mona’s progress from a safe distance by means of a tiny tracking chip implanted within her.

How did one go about broaching a topic like that and not seem impertinent? Was “I was just wondering” the correct opening
gambit? “So, are you some kind of genetically altered superbeing?”
So, am I totally paranoid or retarded?
Karl brooded as he trudged in Mona’s wake, the euphoria of being outdoors tabled for the nonce. The other thought, the one that kept cropping up, was whether or not she was even human. That posed an even trickier question of etiquette. “So, are you an angel of the Lord or a demon from Hell?”

“What?”

Mona stopped and looked at Karl with something approximating interest.

“Huh?” he replied.

“Am I demon from Hell?”

Karl began to sweat even more, his stomach doing flips.
I said that out loud?
rang through his skull.
Idiot!

“What?” he stammered, attempting to feign innocence.

“You said—”

Karl cut her off with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Not
you
. No. Ruth, I was thinking about. Ruth. Over there. But she’s no angel, anyone can see that. Just a weird thing I was thinking. Just wanted to see how it sounded out loud.” He smiled inanely. “Crazy. Not you.” He made the loco gesture pointing at himself and shook his head.

“Uh-huh.”

Karl longed for his belt to give himself a few choice strokes. The sun seemed hotter down here than on the roof, like it was turned up or aimed by some giant sadistic kid with a magnifying glass—God as megabrat. The air didn’t move. Just the flies. Karl’s neck skin crawled and oozed perspiration. Between the mortification and fear, his back felt like it was covered with fire ants, the Saran Wrap bandage loosening as it filled with sweat, but hopefully not blood. It stung like the fucker of all mothers. Shouldn’t the weather be cooling down by now? No, it was still summer.
Endless summer
. Global warming plus zombies.

Yeah, humanity had somehow done this to itself.

Stupid humanity
, Karl thought.
Stupid me. How could I not realize I said that aloud?
He wanted to stop thinking altogether for fear of a repeat bout of honesty Tourette’s. He needed to stay in Mona’s good books.

The
Good Book.

Books.

That’s
why they were making this expedition.

As they slogged west, Karl was reminded of the annual Puerto Rican Day parade, which commenced here on East Eighty-sixth. The crowd pushed back as Mona and he trekked up the center of the street, ankle deep in rotting limbs and rubbish. Maybe this was a little less festive. Karl surveyed the crowd. His mind was swimming, overstimulated. Their path was serpentine, weaving between forsaken vehicles and countless zombies. Inside one car a zombified child in a car seat thumped its head mindlessly against the window, the glass glazed with coagulated grue. That withered tot had been trapped in that car for nearly half a year and was still animate. Karl shuddered. The seemingly eternal question once again flitted into his head:
How long will it be before these things just run out of steam?

Books.

Let’s do this.

Let’s
do
this
.

“I need to hit the bookstore.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah. Abe said he wanted some books to better himself. Yeah. That’s something, a man his age. I guess that’s kind of admirable. ’Course he could just be bored, but still.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I need some further scriptural reading, too. To maybe find some answers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You really never encountered any other survivors during your travels?”

“Nope.”

“That’s so weird. You ever try calling out? Seeing if maybe you got any response?”

“Nope.”

She might be lying. If she were a demon it would be her duty to lie, to please her unholy master. Karl cleared his throat, then hollered, “Is anyone out there?” as loud as possible. He repeated it a couple of times but the only reply was increased agitation in the zombies that flanked them. Mona punched Karl on the bicep and squinted.

“Don’t,” Mona said. “Riles ’em.”

“It’s just, if there was anyone out there I . . .”

“Just don’t.”

“Okay. Sorry. I was just . . . Sorry.”

On they trudged, the zombies hanging back, frustrated. The experiment so far was a success. Karl hadn’t been eaten. Big success. Huge. This could change everything. As they neared First Avenue, Karl felt buoyed by their progress. The sun no longer felt amplified, it felt invigorating. His leg muscles felt purposeful. He looked up at the sky, which was clear and blue, and felt glorified. He felt closer to God than he had in ages. Or at least fonder. Midway between First and Second, the shrink-wrap around Karl’s midriff burst and pinkish brine splashed the pavement. Mona whipped her head around, startled by the wet sound. She stared at the puddle at Karl’s feet.

“Your water just break?”

Mona cracking a joke was almost as alarming as the amplified interest the zombies displayed. The scent of his natural soup was like sounding the dinner gong. Though they hung back, their
rancor was heightened. The sounds emanating from their cracked, broken faces threatened to void Karl’s colon.

“Oh God. Oh Jesus,” he whimpered. He wanted to drop to his knees and pray.

“Keep moving.”

With stinging liquid dripping from his back, Karl followed Mona’s edict. The trip back to the building now seemed like miles rather than a couple of blocks. Long blocks. Avenue blocks, which were at least double the length of north-south ones.
Abe and his books. Abe
. What had Abe ever done for him? What was he thinking, volunteering for this madness?

Volunteering?

He’d suggested it.

Karl wanted to strangle himself.

Don’t blame Abe. You wanted that pill book. You did. Blame yourself.

“Get the fuck offa me!” Alan shrilled, swatting away Abe’s palsied hands.

Abe moaned from the pits of his collapsed lungs, pushing up plumes of stale, mucus-scented reek. This wasn’t what Alan had expected when he came a-knockin’ on Abe’s door. Ever since Ruth’s demise, Alan felt bad for the old guy, up here all alone. But this was bullshit. At first, once he’d gotten Abe’s door open, he’d thought the old man was just disoriented, the way he was bumping up against the windowsill. Maybe too much Valium. But once Abe had turned around Alan knew he’d joined the ranks of the undead. And now here he was, wrestling with a zombified oldster in a fusty apartment that smelled of mothballs and something worse.

Alan managed to knock Abe to the ground, upon which he heard Abe’s hip splinter. Abe grasped at Alan, but like the old commercial,
he’d fallen and couldn’t get up. Alan felt queasy. This wasn’t comfortably impersonal like his relationship to the things below. This was Abe. Abraham Fogelhut, bearing out the cliché that when one half of an elderly couple perishes the other usually follows in close order—
only now they came back
. Alan scanned the room, looking for something to put Abe out of his misery, but saw nothing obvious. With Abe scraping brittle nails against the grain of the rug, trying to rise and failing, Alan reached the door, stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. He felt pretty certain Abe wouldn’t be mastering the doorknob, let alone getting himself up and about any time soon. Alan gulped some deep breaths, smoothed the front of his shirt, and then headed down to let the others know about Abe’s condition.