by Ginger Booth
His grumpy voice concurred from the pile of blankets. “You got that right. Hey, Germy, good to hear you.” Frosty couldn’t see them in the dark.
Jeremy objected. “Germy!”
“Your new street name. I’m Frosty the Snowman. She’s Panic. You’re Germy.”
Ava had guessed right – hero worship, from up and coming 11-year-old to one of their top trophy winners. Jeremy fled her arms and landed skidding to his knees at Frosty’s side. Or rather right into Frosty, judging from the muffled Oomph! of protest.
“We’re gonna form our own gang?” Germy asked.
“Yeah. Claim this dojo for our lair,” Frosty returned.
Ava was glad Germy couldn’t see him. This daring assertion carried less weight if you saw Frosty’s mottled face. Judging by his unblemished skin, the child never got sick.
“You’re our first recruit,” Frosty assured the boy. “Water Tiger number three.”
Ava settled beside Germy and squeezed Frosty’s hand, once she found it in the dark. “Water Tigers is a perfect name for our gang.” Being called by her surname was weird, but she could humor him.
December 25, E-day plus 17.
At another spate of giggles across the room, Frosty finally gave up on sleeping, and enjoyed a huge stretch in the pile of blankets. He glanced over to where Panic and Germy sat stretching on the mats, and smiled, his first bout of happiness since the Ebola nightmare began.
He’d never slept with a girl in his arms before. Oh, he’d had sex before. And there was nothing sexy about the wiggly furnace of Germy nestled against his back. But still – he caught Panic’s eye and she blushed, too.
“Merry Christmas, sleepyhead!” Germy called over.
Christmas. Hell. Frosty scrubbed his sore face with a hand. His mother lit the Hanukkah candles the first day he couldn’t rise from bed. He wasn’t sure whether she lit the last one before she chose to kill herself. But he attended a Catholic high school. Religious studies was his favorite class, with the awesome ethics discussions. And his father was sort of Christian. And his mother – Yeah, let’s play Christian today.
Ava had caught his blank stillness and gazed at him in concern. He smiled at her, remembering her in his arms, the sweetness of her curves. And yesterday, it was relief beyond measure to have her hold him to her breast when he arrived at her apartment, to not be alone with his head anymore. “I got the best Christmas presents ever!” He clambered out of bed. “Two of them!”
“Me, too!” Panic agreed. “Good company.”
Frosty did the needful, including another mug of the life-giving protein shake. Then he joined them, creakily levering himself down to the mats for leg stretches. Light sifted in through the street shutters, the dimness hopefully kind to his appearance. His muscles objected at first, but he breathed into the hitches and strains, and felt their fibers unclench and smooth as he rocked and bent. He even tried a yoga sun salutation, a sequence of moves from a standing stretch, to energy-summoning squats and inversions and back up, to get the blood flowing.
Panic flopped over for push-ups. He nudged her butt with a playful socked toe. “Don’t wear yourself out.” He glanced to Germy, who’d lain down and turned his face away. He prodded with a toe there as well. “Christmas sucks.”
The boy sniffed hard and agreed. “Christmas sucks.”
“But you know,” Frosty continued, “what I always wanted? A dojo of my own.”
Panic scoffed. “He applied to an Ivy League school. Probably get a master’s degree at least.”
Actually, he received his acceptance letter from Yale the day before Ebola broke out. He promised his dad not to tell anyone, give him time to put together a dinner party celebration that weekend for Frosty’s friends. So she didn’t know. And Yale seemed so dead and irrelevant now. “That’s what dad wants,” he agreed, “and he’s the one paying for it. But what I want, is to teach kids to play and fall and fight at a dojo. And look! I got my wish! A dojo.”
Germy snickered. “We haven’t asked Sensei yet.”
“So let’s go.” He did another deep squat and a couple twists, then pulled his boots on. The others scrambled to follow suit. He finally caught Panic for a quick kiss and a shared smile.
“I can’t believe you,” she murmured, with a blush and a smile. “Too good to be true.”
“I could say the same about you.” He leaned in to breathe into her ear, “Fake it til you make it. It’s a glorious day.”
She shook her head and chuckled. But even in their rather rustic accommodations, she’d brushed her teeth and her hair, and led the kid in morning limbering-up. She’d taken charge last night when he was done in. He’d liked girls before, but not like this. He admired her. He was lucky as hell to have her by his side for this stretch of nightmare.
But now it was his turn to be strong. With friends by his side again, he just might be able to manage that. He lumbered up, and reached a hand down to his companions in turn as they finished their laces.
Germy looked scared. “You’ll watch our backs when we get up there, right, Germy? Stay at the door while we go in.” He held his eye until the 11-year-old gulped and nodded. Frosty smiled at him. “Just like competition. We got this.”
If he made too big a point of his morale-building, he’d undermine their confidence, so he left it at that. He pulled on his coat and gloves, and led the way out of the dojo, letting Ava handle the lock. He headed up the stairs. Germy, anxious, tried to scamper ahead, but Frosty insisted he guard the rear.
Not that he was worried much about climbing to the fifth floor. At Washington Square Apartments, most people hunkered behind their doors, too frightened to even peek out. He expected more of the same today, and got it. He sat on a step for a couple minutes at the 4th floor landing, and insisted his companions rest a moment as well. Then he simply marched upward to Sensei’s door and knocked.
Not a sound from within, though he heard some creaks and steps elsewhere down the corridor. People lurked on this floor, probably not many. The smell of death was strong. That was ever-present now, and he’d learned to tune it out as background data. He nodded for Ava to try the keys, but she couldn’t find one that worked.
So he kicked the door open, and pulled the two of them into the doorway, a finger to his lips for silence. He stuck his head out to listen again to the hall. He could probably hear a pin drop out there. No one stirred now, frozen like prey. Hm. He pulled the door closed and set Germy in front of it. “Watch with your ears, OK?” he whispered.
Frosty nodded to Ava, who nodded back in unhappy resolve. They could already tell by the smell and silence that they’d meet only death here. Light enough filled the one-bedroom apartment from the front windows and balcony. He peeked into the bedroom to see his beloved mentor crumpled on his side, mottled face frozen in agony, a powerfully built guy reduced to this indignity.
Sensei taught him to fight. But more, the man taught him how to live, to show respect and gratitude, to lead and act with honor. And if Frosty ever dared accuse him of being a father figure, Sensei would make him grovel for failing to properly honor Cole Snowdon, his dad, who gave him life and paid the bills. The memory made him smile a little.
“Ganbatte, Sensei.” Fight on.
Frosty stepped in and covered the fighter’s humiliating final defeat with a blanket. What would you have me do, Sensei? They couldn’t live like this surrounded by dead bodies. If they were to make a stand in this tenement, the corpses had to go. You’d have me do the next right thing. Father Tanis, his ethics teacher, would have offered the same advice, he imagined. What else could one do, after all?
“Let’s carry him down,” Frosty told Panic. “We can scrounge later.”
She disagreed. “The door won’t lock again. We leave with the body, the neighbors will scavenge. He’d want us to have what he left behind, not them.”
Frosty rocked his head so-so. He expected Sensei would have invited everyone on the floor to drop by his Christmas Eve party last nig
ht. Panic hadn’t joined the dojo yet last Christmas. But he and Germy had studied with the martial arts master six years, both star pupils. Sensei wouldn’t give a damn who took his stuff, if they had need of it.
But they did need it, so it was fine for them to claim it first.
“Right,” he said. “Check the kitchen for food. I’ll look for something to pack it in.” He ducked back into Sensei’s room, and opened a window to air out the stench. The walk-in closet offered a large wheeled suitcase, with smaller suitcase and a generous duffel nestled within like Matryoshka dolls. The checked-luggage tags still advertised his last trip to study with Shaolin kung fu masters in China. He was lucky with that one, barely made it back to New York before commercial flights were grounded and the American armed forces started pulling out everywhere overseas. Frosty loved his own trip to Japan a few years back. But Asia was no place for an abandoned American.
More important, he found Sensei’s gun locker. But Ava had the keys. He ducked out to bring her the luggage just as Germy flattened himself against the hallway wall and the door banged open.
A guy stood there looking even rougher than Frosty from the Ebola, face full of the mottled purple and yellow bruises. And he stood pointing a semi-automatic rifle directly at the teenager. “What are you punks doing here!”
3
December 25, E-day plus 17.
Frosty released the nestled suitcases and raised his hands to waist height peaceably. “We’re Sensei’s students, orphaned by the epidemic. But he passed away too.”
“Sure you are! You can’t come in here looting!” The gun trembled, the man’s weak fingers spasming, including on the trigger. The guy looked like an ordinary middle-aged schlep, hair thinning, gut thickening until recent illness caused him to precipitously drop 20 lbs. His belt acted as a drawstring, gathering inches of excess waistband on khaki slacks.
“Sir, put the gun down. You’re drawing a weapon of war against children on Christmas morning. Pray reconsider.” That last line Frosty delivered dry as dust.
The guy’s eyes darted guiltily toward Germy. He shuffled a step forward and hunched forward to look into the kitchen at tiny Panic, barely over 5’ tall. He swallowed and started to lower the gun.
“The safety, dammit!” Frosty barked at him. He lunged forward and yanked the AK47 out of the man’s hands. He pulled up the safety on the right of the barrel, then tossed the gun behind him onto the couch. His best friend Maz’s dad, a retired Marine sergeant, taught the boys to shoot at his commune-survivalist camp in New Hampshire. More left-leaning, Frosty’s parents would’ve had kittens if they knew.
“Hey!” the man objected, moving on him threateningly.
Frosty had a better angle, and could see his petite girlfriend taking a stance to tackle the guy from the side. He shook his head at her. “You had no right to pull a gun on us. Go away! Oh, and merry Christmas. Asshole.”
“Look! You don’t live here!”
“Neither do you!” Frosty countered. “We’re Sensei’s friends! He would’ve wanted us to take anything we needed. And by the way, that includes the dojo downstairs. Which is now mine. Howdy, neighbor. Shape up.”
A querulous old voice called up the corridor behind the man. “Arthur? I know those kids. They’re friends of Richard’s.”
Arthur licked his lip, and backed out into the hall. “You’re sure?” he called to the invisible neighbor.
“Yes, I saw them in the hall. That nice boy used to help me with my shopping cart. Is Richard…?”
“They say he’s dead,” Arthur supplied.
A door creaked closed without further comment. Frosty didn’t recall that particular oldster. But Sensei would have drawn him over the coals if he failed to help the elderly wrestle their shopping across the street and into the elevator. Like many boys, Frosty came to martial arts and Sensei with anger issues to manage. The karate instructor advocated good works as the key to self-control.
“I need my gun back,” Arthur asked sheepishly.
“Do you think you deserve it, Arthur?” Frosty challenged him. “Consider me your visit from the ghost of Christmas present. And fuck off.”
Still Arthur hesitated, weaving on unsteady feet. Panic slipped into the kitchen doorway, startling him so he backed up again toward the public hallway. “You can get your gun after we’re gone,” she suggested.
Frosty pressed, “Unless you can help me carry my friend’s corpse downstairs?”
“No, I –” Arthur staggered backward and fled, to his own apartment by the sound of it.
Frosty grabbed a hard-backed chair from the dining table and used it to jam the door closed again.
“I’m sorry, Frosty,” Germy attempted. “I was helping Ava and –”
“Shh. Germy, that happened because I kicked the door in. That’s all. Help Panic stuff these suitcases. Babe, have you seen…? Never mind.” Frosty plucked up Sensei’s keys from a tiny table next to the door under his coat hook. He also snatched up the AK47 from the couch, and checked its length against his available luggage. The duffel worked.
Panic quipped, “Aw, you’re not going to leave Arthur his rifle?”
Frosty snorted amusement, then flinched as a small handgun fired down the hall. That could have come from Arthur’s place. He yanked out the rifle again, and sidled up to the door, motioning Panic and Germy toward the back of the kitchen. He unlatched his chair and peeked into the hall. The intervening elderly man likewise stuck his head out next door.
“Was that Arthur?” Frosty asked.
“God forgive him,” the old man agreed, and crossed himself. He looked toward Frosty and nodded sternly. “It’s a mortal sin.”
Arthur killed himself? “Yes, sir.” He crossed himself as well, which seemed to mollify the senior, because he withdrew and threw his door bolts.
Frosty rigged his chair again, and sighed. “Getting good stuff?”
“Awesome!” Panic confirmed. “He has those ethylene-absorbing bags!”
For a public school kid, his girlfriend said the damnedest things sometimes. “What?”
She held out a couple yellowish plastic bags full of lettuce and carrots and a cucumber. “These bags absorb the ethylene gas that makes fruit and vegetables rot. These are as good as fresh from the supermarket.”
“Awesome,” he agreed. His wrinkled nose noted that other items in that dead refrigerator had rotted right on schedule. Sour milk. Ethylene, huh?
“Hard boiled eggs, cheeses, hard salami, lots more protein shakes and stuff,” Panic gushed. “Not many cans. That’s too bad.” She held up bags of potatoes and onions.
“Check for frozen vegetables. Those might still be good a couple days.”
“Will do!”
Frosty retreated to the bedroom and emptied the well-stocked gun locker into the duffel. Sensei didn’t have an AK47, though. He’d have to drop by Arthur’s place to look for ammo. Steeling his resolve, he made that side trip, cautiously knocking on the elderly neighbor’s door first to explain his errand.
Arthur had left his door unlocked. Frosty peeked in. He was relieved not to find gore splattered at the entrance. He pulled the door to behind him. A fancy gun cabinet stood in the living room, but he hadn’t seen keys by the door. Sighing, he took position by the bedroom door. “Arthur? If you’re in there, I’ll go away.”
No answer.
He winced his eyes shut a moment, then inched the door open with the rifle barrel. Yeah, just as bad as he expected. His foot pushed the door the rest of the way open. Another man lay dead on the bed. Arthur apparently sat at the edge of the bed, then blew his brains out to fall backward onto him.
How badly do I want AK47 ammo? He sighed. God offered him wondrous gifts this Christmas morning – Panic, Germy, a dojo, friends again, guns, ammo. To not accept the ammo would be ungrateful. In distaste, he figured out which pocket held Arthur’s keys, and fished them out, then retched as he wiped off the pistol, tugged from Arthur’s still-warm fingers.
He p
acked up the ammo and withdrew to Sensei’s place.
Panic took one look at his face, and asked in concern, “Everything OK?”
“Peachy. Excuse me.”
He closed the bedroom door behind him, then realized he was closing himself in with another corpse. He stepped into the bathroom instead, met by his own horrible bruised visage in the mirror. Ghost of Christmas present. He opened the medicine cabinet just to get that mirror out of his face.
Sensei’s grooming implements stood neatly arrayed, with a few fresh tooth-brushes still in their packages. Of drugs, he had only the standard over-the-counter pain-killers and cold remedies. Frosty plucked up the shaving razor and stared at it. A man’s tool. He used the kind with replaceable blades, and some kind of fancy soap.
Did I screw up, Sensei?
Don’t second-guess yourself, Frosty, he would say. You did the best you could at the time. So that’s the wrong question. The right question is, what might you do differently next time?
Try to make a friend, the boy decided, as he collected up the man’s grooming things in a neat little travel bag. Is that what you would have done, Sensei?
Nah, I’d have kicked the guy’s ass, his mentor snarked in his imagination.
Frosty couldn’t help it – he started laughing, a chuckling-and-sobbing affair. It was true, too! If Sensei caught a grown man aiming an AK47 at children, that bastard was dead meat. He deserved to die, and took care of it for you. What’s the problem?
“Frosty, are you sure you’re OK?” Panic inquired anxiously from the door.
“Just give me a minute with Sensei, babe,” he returned. That was honest enough, too.
“OK. But I’m here for you.”
And she really was. And that was a miracle. “Thanks. Love you.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and finished packing salvage. Sensei had a bunch of fun martial arts weapons in his closet. Some were illegal in New York State, like the nunchucks, a pair of short steel pipes connected with a chain. All in all, this duffel made an interesting armory. He kicked it along in front of him soccer-fashion to the entry hall.
