Zombies in Love (13 page)

"Not really," mumbled Sarah.

“Forget it!” yelled Ian.  “I don’t believe he’d make us take it.  And even if he did, it won’t kill us.  Probably.  It’s not going to kill us, and I’m going to graduate, and I’m going to get my PhD, and that’s the way it’s going to be!”

Sarah exhaled and studied his face as though she were memorizing it.  “Goodbye, Ian.”

She walked into the crowd and disappeared.

#

When the Red Line of the T was extended to Porter Square, Winthrop blocked it from continuing underneath their campus.  Though many myths have arisen to account for the detour, the truth was that the Board was concerned that the T would interfere with Winthrop's secret, private subway.   Mr. Dudley's car waited for him at the Memorial Hall station, brass neatly polished, the leather on the armchair gleaming, his favorite scotch already poured and on the table. 

Mr. Dudley took the elevator down to the basement where John Winthrop dreamed on his slab until his namesake university needed him.  That would not be today, Mr. Dudley reflected, thank goodness.  When Winthrop was awakened, he tended to stay awake for a while, mooching around, drinking the Board's stash of whiskey, trying to get the Board to play chess with him.  And-- oh, why not be frank, in the privacy of his own head-- the real difficulty with this was that Mr. Winthrop did not wear pants.  The image of Winthrop's caprine testicles resting on one of their fine leather club chairs was a terrible thing to contemplate.

Perhaps one of the servants could be dispatched to J. Press to buy him an appropriately large pair of khakis? 

And Winthrop became so maudlin when he drank!  Moaning about how all his loved ones had passed on, and how lonesome he was, and how much he'd given up for his namesake university, and on, and on... 

No, better that Winthrop sleep his uncanny sleep.  Mr. Dudley could handle the zombies.  Goodness knew, he'd seen worse in his day!  He often thought that the science departments were more trouble than they were worth; liberal arts professors might embarrass the university (
rest in peace, Dr. Thal
), but only a scientist would think it was a good idea to release a giant squid into the Charles to test whether it could adapt to a freshwater environment.  Thank goodness the tourists on the Duck Boat had been too rattled by the encounter to take anything like a clear picture of the beast, but that poor promising young coxswain had never been seen again, with disastrous results for the crew team's record.  In any case, a few lurching ghouls would be easier to eliminate than that monstrous menace.  At least they weren't underwater.

Mr. Dudley relaxed and listened to the gentle rumbling of the wheels.  The subway was a comfort, for a man of Mr. Dudley's age and disinclination towards physical activity, especially as the campus continued to spread across the other side of the river.  Several decades earlier, Winthrop University had formed a secret real estate consortium to buy a large tract of land in Allston, without rousing the suspicions of homeowners who would probably refuse to sell, or sell at an inflated rate.  It had worked rather well, and the Board of Overseers had only needed to deploy the gargoyles to eviscerate a few holdouts.

Due to financial issues, they had never completed construction on the science center that was intended for the site.  At least, that was what appeared to have happened.  But Winthrop's great gift, Mr. Dudley always thought, was to turn apparent disadvantages to its own ends.

The subway came to a stop in Allston, under the concrete cap that marked the failed science building.  Beneath the concrete, the basements still stood, ready for their new purpose.  The car doors opened smoothly and Mr. Dudley emerged onto the balcony and regarded the scene below. The men, arranged in ranks, clad in their matching white jumpsuits, waited patiently at attention for Mr. Dudley's orders. 

Mr. Dudley smiled.  No reason to raise Mr. Winthrop for this, none at all.

ch. 19

Seven months earlier--

Jack sits in his father’s office, his heart pounding so painfully in his chest that he thinks it must be visible to the other people in the room: his mother, his father, and his cousin Sam Lazarus.  Jack is wearing his best suit, with the Hermes tie he got in Paris, and it’s a mistake; Sam’s wearing something he bought at the local men’s store, the one that the Lazarus family has owned for time out of memory, and even though the elbows are a bit worn, he looks diligent and conscientious, and Jack looks too flashy.

Screwed up again
.  But at least he’s sober, and he’s tanked up on coffee, for optimal intelligence.  He inhales, exhales, trying to relax. 
Thunk thunk thunk
goes his heart.

“Well,” says Dad.  “It’s time we decided which of you boys gets the
Palmetto
.  But we want to hear what you think.  Sam?”

Sam says something about how hard he’s worked for years, and all the awards his reporting won before he moved into an editorial role, and then a managerial role, and how he knows the institution from top to bottom...  It’s all true.  Sam is an eager beaver, Sam is reliable, Sam is the ultimate Good Seed.

Sam is such a good guy that even Jack can’t manage to hate him, usually, even though the contrast only shows up his own shortcomings.

And through every word that his cousin says, Jack tries to figure out what he can say. 
I wrote fake news stories.  I showed up drunk half the time, when I did show up. 
But he can’t lose the
Palmetto
.  He’s lost without it.

“Well, Jack?” says his father.  He looks tired, and not particularly friendly to his screw-up son.  It’s all pro-forma now.

And without intending it, without forethought, a lie rolls right out of Jack’s mouth.  “I may not have the best history here,” said Jack.  “But at least I haven’t been meeting with Gannett about selling them the paper as soon as I take ownership.”

Both his mother and father turn abruptly to look at Sam.  Jack watches the flicker of distaste that passes over his father’s face as Sam stands up and cries that Jack has told a bald-faced lie.  And a chill of horror passes through Jack as he realizes that his father believes him.

Without intending to, purely out of dumb luck, Jack has stumbled on the one story that will actually get him the
Palmetto. 

#

Four hours later, evening has seeped into Charleston, and the walls of his house are closing in on Jack.  He’s trying very hard not to drink.  He’s trying to be good-- after all, he won.  Right? 

But when his parents paraded him through the halls of the
Palmetto
, announcing their decision, he saw the way the staff looked at him.  Like the passengers on the Titanic must have looked at their captain.  “Him?  You picked
Jack
? The drunk?  The liar?  The lazy one?”  And he’d felt the smile tighten on his face to a grimace as he realized what exactly was ahead of him-- a long slog of trying to prove to his staff that he wasn’t the man that he was.

Is that even possible?  How long can he fake being good?

So he pours himself a glass of bourbon, no ice, and drinks it down fast, and then another one, and he finally feels loose enough to open the door when someone starts pounding on it and leaning on the doorbell.  He opens the door and he wishes for the thousandth time that he could be happy to see his cousin.  But Sam has never liked him, even back when they were little boys, when their wrongheaded mothers dressed them as alike as china dolls, a move that only accentuated their differences.  Even when they were boys, Sam has always acted like Jack has stolen his favorite toy and broken it.

Sam will never forgive him for this one.

              "You can't do this," says Sam, following him to the kitchen.  He stumbles a little and Jack realizes that he's been drinking, and Sam never drinks. Sam is supposed to be the good cousin, the responsible one, and with a sudden nauseous feeling, Jack wonders if the two of them have traded accidentally traded lives.  He wasn't supposed to win.

              "Do you want me to go to Dad and tell him I lied?"  He looks Sam over, and for the first time it strikes him how desperate Sam looks. Sweaty, and Jack can smell the beer on his breath.  And for a moment, it feels to Jack as though he can see the future.  He can see Sam's body softening around the cheek and gut, the broken blood vessels spreading over his nose as the situation gets more and more hopeless for Sam, as the extent of his loss sinks in, and as the sense of embittered responsibility that has always wired him together unravels into nothing.  Jack has made some bad choices in his life, he knows, but he has always been too vain to let himself fall apart completely.  Sam, on the other hand-- when you go down to the core of him, all you hear is a child's petulant whine,
Unfair!  Unfair!

              Jack won.  And now that he has won, Jack supposes that he'd better act like it.

              "You know what's going to happen if you take over the paper," says Sam.  "Everyone's going to quit.  They won't work with you, they don't trust you."

              "I'll hire new staff," says Jack, turning to wash the dishes.  "It's not hard to find good unemployed journalists, these days."  He dunks a plate in the soapy water.  "Besides, I don't think I did lie."

              "I have never once met with Gannett."

              "Cox, then.  Or McClatchy.  Even I can tell that Lacey's bleeding you dry.  How long until you have to sell the house, Sam?  I may have my problems, but I know how to hold onto my money.  And that's why I won.  It's not because I did better work.  You were always better than I was.  But I know how to keep what's mine."

              Jack sets a plate in the rack, not looking at his cousin.  He's got to let Sam know that there's no back entrance to owning the
Palmetto
.  He owes the man enough not to let him hang.  "And another thing.  Dad wouldn't say it, but I will.  You're going to have to find another job.  It's the best thing for both of us.  You don't want to work for me, do you?"

              He feels his cousin's hand on his shoulder, and he turns.  Maybe he's been too hard on the man.  "You don't have to rush," Jack adds.  "Take your time, make a fresh start--"

The thing in Sam's other hand is a kitchen knife.  And to Jack’s total shock and surprise, Sam stabs him.  At first it doesn’t hurt at all, and then the pain builds to an excruciating burning shriek around the knife, as he folds inwards, but Sam holds him against the counter and stabs him again--

#

              Jack wakes up,
wham,
and he's not in his kitchen, he's under several feet of salt water.  How did he-- did he hit his head while diving?  Drunken blackout?  Two bourbons shouldn't be enough-- But never mind that, never mind how he got here, he has to get to the surface, fast.  He can see the moonlight on the surface of the water, and he pulls himself towards it with strength he didn't know he had.

              He coughs, treads water, wipes something sticky from his mouth, coughs some more as he thinks, tries to rid himself of the bitter chalky taste in his mouth.  So, here's how it happened: Sam finally snapped.  Sam stabbed him and threw him in the bay. 
You're supposed to weigh the body down, idiot,
Jack thinks, as he keeps hacking and spitting reddish water into the darker ocean.  Sam has never been as competent as he thinks, he confuses being straight-laced for being smart.

              But that's all right, everything's all right, because Jack has just had an epiphany: it was a false choice all along.  Why should the
Palmetto
only go to one of them?  It's not the throne of England, after all, it's just a newspaper. 
How about this,
he thinks, to Sam, as if he were there,
you're the smart one with the numbers, I'm the flashy guy with the smile and the suit.  So that's what we do, that's how we divide up the work.  I own the
Palmetto
, but let's face it, I'll never get married, never have kids, and Lacey's going to squeeze one out one of these days if only she can decorate the nursery for it, so your kids inherit from me.  We put that in writing, triple your salary, what do you say?

              And hey, how about this-- you never tell my parents I was lying, and I never mention you tried to kill me?

             
He's stopped coughing now, and the harbor is perfectly quiet and beautiful.  He can hear the clanking lines of the sailboats at anchor and the distant noises of Charleston at night.  It must be close to midnight, but he can hear a few televisions playing.  The moonlight renders everything around him strangely visible, which reminds him that he hasn't looked at the stab wounds yet.  They don't hurt-- is that good?  He can't say.  He steels himself to pull up his soggy shirt and is rewarded with the sight of a red network of half-healed scars over the left side of his stomach.

              That's not right.  He touches them gingerly.  Sealed up.  That's not possible.

              His heart should be pounding in his chest, but he can't feel it.  He can barely feel anything at all.  Except he's-- hungry?  Can that be right?

              And with his shaking right hand over the pulse point, where he feels nothing, absolutely nothing, Jack realizes something that has somehow managed to elude him his entire adult life: that there is such a thing as too late, that sometimes there are no second chances, and sometimes when you lose something, you lose it forever.