by Eli Nixon
Chapter 6
"RAYMOND, isn't it? Can I help you?"
Janet Wazowski was heavy in the way you figure a retired linebacker's heavy. She wasn't round, just thick from top to bottom, like a barrel someone screwed a couple fence posts to the bottom of to act as legs, then topped up with the kindest manakin head they could find. No neck, just the head, sort of perched there on her shoulders.
I'd only ever spoken to Janet a few times, mostly when I was downtown working the register at Collins Hardware, but she'd always struck me as one of those people with a genuine streak of kindness. One of the other part-timers at the hardware store, Skinny Lenny, called her Janet Frankenstein once and I'd threatened to take him out back and feed him a few knuckles if he ever said it again. He did, so I did, and he kicked my ass. Lenny was a smackhead, too, just not one of the decent ones. I doubted he'd really been born, just crawled from an asshole pit somewhere down in the Meadows. Dick Collins fired him later for taking an early bonus from the register. Junkies were such lowlifes sometimes.
I turned back quickly at Janet's voice, ready to apologize for interrupting her, and froze.
She looked a mess. Pale face, sweaty. Bloodshot eyes. Deep wrinkles. She was in her forties, but right now she looked like she could have been collecting her pension. Despite her large frame, she had these twiggy little arms and they were shaking like a papery cicada shell in a high wind. Even so, she smiled at us and asked again:
"Anything I can help you kids with?"
I flinched inside. Rivet was twenty-four, and he hated being called "kid," but he was just staring.
"Sorry, Mrs. Wazowski," I said. "We didn't mean to bother you. We were walking down the street and thought we saw someone inside. Rivet—my friend here—just wanted to make sure nobody had broken in or anything. I told him about that time you helped me out after...after my parents, you know..." I trailed off and made a show of studying my shoes. I should have gone into improv. That was beautiful.
"Of course, dear," Janet's wan smile faltered, then steadied.
"Rivet just wanted to repay the favor. If it was needed, you know. Like I said, we saw someone, and we couldn't walk by without at least checking. You're here, though. Again, sorry to bother." I jabbed Rivet with my elbow, let's go.
"You feeling okay, Miss Wowski?" Rivet asked.
"Caught something, that's all. Must be one of those bugs going around."
I nodded knowingly and made to leave.
"A bug..." Rivet wouldn't take a hint. "Could I ask you a personal question, Miss Wowski? Are you taking any medication?"
"It's Wazowski, dear. Just some pills for this cricky leg of mine." She slapped her thigh lightly. "Old war wound. That's a joke," she added when Rivet didn't smile. Her left eyelid fluttered. "That's a joke," she said again.
"When's the last time you took one?" Rivet asked. He backed away a quarter-step. Barely noticeable. But Janet saw it, and she matched it with a step forward.
"That's a joke," Janet said. Her frame filled the doorway and she tottered slightly on the raised metal strip at the threshhold. Her eyelid fluttered again, and the left side of her mouth sank, turning her polite smile into a narrow sideways "S." I backed up, too, and Janet stepped over the threshold onto the concrete stoop. Fuck.
"Why don't you run inside and take another one, Mrs. Wazowski," I suggested. I was rolling the BIC pen in my pocket between sweaty fingers.
"Old w-war wound. That's a j-j-joke," Janet stuttered, then snagged Rivet by his short black hair and jerked him toward her.
I wish I could say I reacted sooner. Wish I hadn't just stood there, shocked, while Janet used her weight to yank Rivet to the ground by his hair. His legs slipped back and his head cracked the concrete and he tried to squirm away but Janet had his head in both hands now, crouched down, and one of her hands came free with a thick mat of Rivet's hair which she held to her face and sniffed before she turned to me and shoved the black wad into her mouth. Tiny hairs stuck out between her lips like spider legs, and she snarled and chewed.
Rivet was slapping at her with both hands, on his back, his feet kicking out in the air past the narrow stoop, unable to get any leverage to knock her away, screaming my name.
And I just stood there, a living lawn ornament.
It was the eye that finally got me. When Janet looked back at me, her left eyeball, the twitchy one, had clouded over with a thin haze of pink, like bloody glaucoma. When I saw that pale orb staring up at me, I finally snapped free and drove a knee right into Janet Wazowski's kind, friendly face so hard her lip split under my kneecap with a caterpillar squish. She tumbled backward into her dark house. Rivet rolled and sprang to his feet, then rushed through the doorway after her.
I followed, all action now, take me off the bench, coach. The light shining through the open front door illuminated the entranceway to Janet's house, but all the other interior lights had been switched off and the blinds had been shut, shedding darkness over most of it. Directly through the door, past a small open area for taking off your shoes, was a hardwood staircase that rose up into shadow. On the left of this stairway was a couch and two armchairs arranged in a semi-circle in front of a television—the living room—and to the stairway's right was another open space with what looked like a dining table.
On the stairway itself, lolling on the lowest three steps with her thick feet splayed over the floor toward the door, was Janet. She moaned weakly and pressed both hands to her face, looking for all the world like someone with a killer hangover. Rivet had run past her into the gloomy recesses of the dining room and disappeared God knew where, and here was Janet. All hundred and eighty pounds of her, twitching on one side at the bottom of the staircase and asking for help, saying it was dark, too dark, it hurt, the darkness, who were these people, these people talking to her, she didn't know them, it was so dark.
So I said the first thing that popped into my head: "Want me to turn on a light?"
Janet's head jerked toward my voice and now both of her eyes were that muddy pink. They were almost luminescent in the arc of watery brown outside light. I don't know how she did it, but Janet went from helpless on her back to her feet before I could blink. She got her hands to my chest and shoved me against the wall beside the door. I grabbed her wrists and tried to twist away, but fuck that woman was strong. Her head whipped closer, got my shirt front in her white teeth. Yanked it. Let go. Teeth again, closer. They pinched the skin of my chest and ripped back, staining the shirt red.
I screamed. Punched at her head. My knuckled popped against her skull, hurting me more than they hurt her. She bit in again, going for the blood. Got a solid grip that time and pulled a thick fold of skin away from the pectoral, stretched the skin into a tent under the shirt. More blood blossomed down the front of my shirt as her incisors, evolved over a million years for slicing meat, did their job with gusto on my skin.
Screaming, punching, slapping, I couldn't budge her. Her teeth were working deeper now, burrowing through all the layers of skin and into the muscle tissue beneath. Her eyes were closed with an expression of rapture. I worked both hands flat over her forehead and pushed, fighting against the pain, and finally her teeth sank through that flap of skin far enough to sever it from by body with a sound like ripping corduroy.
Her anchor suddenly gone, Janet's head snapped back in response to my shove, just as a brass lamp stand, sans shade, swung in from the other direction and crunched into the heavy plate at the back of her skull. I slid down the wall, knees weak, and looked up to see Jenny heaving air into her lungs. She cocked back the lamp stand like a Little League hero and swung for the fences, burying the brass pole into Janet's upturned face. The woman crumpled the way the Towers had fallen, top to bottom, into a heap on the entranceway floor. She came to rest beside a pair of neatly arranged Birkenstocks.
"Fuck," I breathed, blinking away tears of pain and gingerly feeling the circle of flayed flesh on my chest.
"Fuck," Jennie agreed. She was trembling.
&nbs
p; "Fuck!" shouted Rivet, rounding the stairs with a wide garden shovel in his hands. He brought it down on Janet's head over and over again, spraying a fine crimson mist with each downward swing. At long last, he dropped the shovel and sank onto the lowest stair. He was laughing softly, manicly, staring at the thing that was now unrecognizable as a person. He was coming apart.
"We killed her," Jennie said, slumping down beside Rivet. The bandage I'd tied around her ear had come loose at one end and now draped over one shoulder like a pirate's bandana. Nobody seemed capable of standing. Janet quivered gently on the floor between the three of us. Deep in the middle of the blood and bone pieces, a single pink eye blinked once.
"We had to," I said. "Right? We had to. She went crazy, like..." I trailed off, but Rivet glanced sharply at me.
"Like me," he finished for me.
"Something's going on," I said. "Will you at least agree to that now, Rivet?"
He nodded, along with Jennie.
"Something bad," I continued. "I don't know what happened to her, but—"
"If it walks like a fish and talks like a fish..." said Jennie.
"...then it must be a zombie," Rivet finished, his voice heavy. "Congratulations, Rayman. You were right for once in your life. And you got yourself an early ticket for the ride."
"Huh?"
Rivet nodded to my shirt, where the blood had now soaked an inverted tree down my stomach.
"Oh...shit." Crazy Janet had bit me. Zombie Janet had bit me. Rivet stood and reached for the shovel on the floor, and like a miracle from on high, I could walk again. I leaped to my feet and sidestepped into the dark living room, hands out, watching Rivet. Jennie rose and put a hand on Rivet's shoulder. Rivet barked a cold laugh.
"Calm down, guys. I'm not going to kill him. Just..." he brought the spade head down on Janet's neck and pressed it to the floor with his foot, "...finishing business," he grunted. Janet's body finally stilled.
"You're not?" I asked cautiously.
"We're ahead of the curve on this, so let's think it out," Rivet said. "We know three things. One, nobody bit me before I crazied up, which means it probably doesn't work like that. I bit both of you, remember. And you're still peaches. Two, you hear that bitch rambling about darkness? Yeah, we've been there. So maybe we can figure out why it's happening."
"Janet wasn't a bitch," I said. "She was...nice." I tried not to look at her body, at the blood pooling into the cracks of the floorboards.
"What's number three?" Jennie asked.
Rivet fished in his shirt pocket and pulled out the baggie of heroin. His eyes flashed. "We know how to kick its ass."
