House of Lazarus

by T. L. Bodine

  For years, the narrative has been the same: The Undead are violent by nature, and only Lazarus keeps them from losing their minds and becoming killing machines. A rash of violence, the attacks on the news, they’ve been proof in living color that Undead and their caretakers could never be trusted to do what needed to be done in order to stay safe. That was the whole thing, the core argument, the reason why Lazarus had to be controlled, the reason why the Undead had to be put into institutions.

  “So it seems to me,” Randy’s saying, his thoughts clearly following the same train that mine are, “that the narrative’s been a little backwards all this time. Keep the Undead in the Lazarus House! They’ll be safe there! But surprise, it’s their drugs that make them go crazy.”

  “We don’t know that,” I say, thinking about Dad, thinking about what kind of monster I’d have to be to send him there, to keep him there, if what we’re saying is right. “It could…there could be something else going on.” They’re doing terrible things to us, Dad had said, and I thought he was just being dramatic, paranoid. “I mean, there’s dozens of Undead in that facility. Maybe hundreds. Coming in from all over the country. There’s no reason they’d be giving them monster juice on purpose.”

  “So the government is experimenting,” Randy says, with the nonchalance of someone talking about a horror movie, not real life. He holds up a hand, ticking off possibilities on his fingers. He turns one down, then a second. “Or your pal tried to screw us over somehow, giving us a bad batch or something.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably it,” I say, latching onto the second explanation like a lifeline. “Or it was something wrong with Javier. Dude was a gangster, maybe he was high on something.”

  Randy holds up a third finger, looking at it thoughtfully. “Drug interaction? Interesting theory, but sure, let’s throw it in the pile.”

  “Anyway, forget I said anything. I was just talking for the video. I don’t actually know anything.”

  Randy drops it, surprisingly, but maybe just because he can see the gears spinning in Zoe’s head already, knows if anybody’s going to dig in deep on this that it’ll be her and that’ll save him the trouble of fighting with me for answers. We wrap it up pretty quick after, Zoe suddenly itching to get off the mesa and back to her computer — gee, I can’t imagine why — and me eager to be anywhere else, doing anything else, distracting my thoughts from this new and terrible idea.

  ***

  “Davin. We have to go public with everything. We have to.”

  We’ve been home for hours at this point, but I know exactly what she’s talking about. She’d gone quiet on the drive home, staring thoughtfully out the window as the trailer parks and laundromats passed us by in reverse-order from what she’d filmed, I guess mulling over the story. Maybe wondering why I hadn’t told her everything earlier. Maybe wondering what else I’m not telling her. Or maybe not wondering about that at all — maybe just thinking about the whole Lazarus puzzle, like all the problems in the world are something that she, specifically, can tackle and solve.

  “And then what? The Coalition comes swooping in to raid the place? I know you’re passionate about this, but as soon as my face goes online, we’re painting a target on our house.”

  Randy had been about halfway in my lap, kissing, the kind of kissing that was leading up to something more, but now he’s retreated to the opposite side of the couch and I’m glad because I’m not feeling like PDA in front of my sister, but my skin is also feeling the absence of his touch.

  At least Zoe seems too fired up to pay a lot of attention.

  “Because they made everybody in the world believe the Undead were dangerous! That’s exactly why we need to go public with this! If people could just see the truth —”

  “Zoe, I hate to tell you this,” Randy says, shifting his weight on the couch. He fidgets with a loose thread on a throw pillow. “But the truth won’t set you free. Do you really think the government made up its own secret police force because they really thought the Undead were all a bunch of murderous zombies? We’re talking about people’s grandmas, here, their husbands and friends and cousins. People know the whole violence narrative is bullshit. It’s just a really convenient excuse for folks who are sick of takin’ care of their relatives to shuttle them off and skip out on any responsibility.”

  His eyes roll in my direction, brows lifting. He smirks, an affable smile, but there’s teeth behind it.

  “No offense.”

  “Fuck you.” I mean it to come out lighthearted, some gentle banter, but there’s a hard edge in my voice. “Look. We’ve been over this. We know the Undead can be dangerous. We’ve seen it.”

  “One time.”

  “One time was enough for me. And besides — it’s not just one time. It’s all over the country. It’s all over the news. Sometimes people go nuts and start attacking people. That’s a fact.”

  “And they said that was happening because they weren’t taking Lazarus,” Zoe presses, raising her voice. “They said that. And they’re using that as an excuse to round people up and put them in prison!”

  “Hospitals aren’t prisons!” I shout back, and then flinch, recoiling from my own anger. I close my eyes and force a breath out through my nose. Behind my eyelids, I can see the Lazarus House, its crumbling old Spanish Mission architecture, its weedy courtyard, its spaces for socialization and privacy. Just because Dad hates it there doesn’t mean it’s a bad place. Dad hated it here, too — so what’s that say about us?

  Zoe blinks at me, surprised. I don’t remember the last time I raised my voice at her. From the look on her face, I don’t think she can remember it either.

  “Does it matter how nice the prison is if you’re not even guilty?” Randy asks. “They say, ‘Take this drug, it keeps you from being a monster.’ Well, maybe that’s bullshit. Maybe the drug doesn’t stop you from being a monster, and maybe it even turns you into one. But what’s not bullshit is that it makes you feel good. It makes you feel like a whole person, more or less. An’ the government just can’t keep its claws out of anythin’ that makes you feel good, can it?”

  “But that’s the whole point. It’s called a Lazarus House for a reason. You go there, you get your drugs, you feel better, they stop you from hurting anybody.”

  “Except the one time we ever saw somebody go nuts on Lazarus, it came right from their stock room,” Randy says, dropping the pillow now and examining his black-painted nails. The edges are starting to chip from picking at them.

  “Christ, Randy, are you just going to play Devil’s Advocate all night?”

  “You’re the one flip-flopping around like a spineless ragdoll,” he snaps back.

  Zoe looks between us, going suddenly stiff and silent, like a rabbit caught under the shadow of a hawk. She looks like she did when she was little and I’d be fighting with Dad, that way she’d draw up and get real small and linger in the hall to run away at the first sign of an impending ass-whooping.

  “Which is it, Davin?” Randy presses. “If you’re going to be a bootlicker, you have to admit that the drugs really work, or else the Lazarus House is just a prison. Otherwise, if you’re going to sit here and say, ‘Oh, I’m fine, I don’t need any drugs,’ then you have to admit that the whole Lazarus House is bullshit.”

  He says this so confidently, so simply, that it almost sounds like it has to be right. But he’s full of shit. Not every choice is a binary, easily divided out into two neat piles. Everything is complicated and messy, with frayed ends and soft edges, and I can feel it with absolute certainty, a pressure in my chest: The Lazarus House has to be okay, because I sent my dad there, I made that choice, and it has to be the right choice. But it’s also not what I want for myself, because I can’t leave Zoe to fend for herself in this world, because I can’t live with myself knowing that my comfort is more important than her safety, and if I can get by without Lazarus then that’s what I need to do — and I need that to be the right choice, too.

  I don’t say
any of these things. I can’t make myself spit out the words.

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Zoe, what did you want for dinner? C’mon, anything you want, it’s still your birthday.”

  She’s still hunkered down in rabbit mode, but she slowly starts to loosen her shoulders from around her ears. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled.” I pause. Randy gets up without saying anything and heads for the back door. He’s lighting his cigarette before he’s even all the way outside, but I wait for the door to latch before I turn back to Zoe. “Can you promise me you’re not going to use that footage?”

  She grumbles something.

  “Zoe, I need you to promise me. No identifying details. No names, no videos, no media, nada.”

  “Fine.”

  ‘Fine’ is better than ‘Whatever,’ so I’ll take that as a win.

  “Besides,” I say. “It’d be irresponsible to break the news without having all the facts, right? You at least have to wait until you know for sure what the whole deal is or you blow your chance, right?”

  That gets through to her. I could sit here and tell her all night how important it is to be safe, how dangerous it is to risk having me outed — how if I go to the Lazarus House, she lands in foster care or shuffled off to some relative neither of us even know. How she could lose everything, from that bedroom film studio to the YouTube channel to her chances at college. But that’s all an acceptable risk.

  Sacrificing journalistic integrity, though? Apparently that’s still something.

  “You’re right. I’ll work on the story. Until I’ve got something they absolutely can’t ignore.”

  “That’s the ticket.” I glance at the back door. “You got your school work done for the day?”

  “It’s my birthdaaaaay,” she whines, but I think it’s mostly artifice.

  “All right, all right, you win. No homework and no starting revolutions. Compromise?”

  She sticks her tongue out at me, but smiles, and the tension’s gone, that scared-rabbit response gone, and things are mostly okay again.

  Chapter 6

  It’s the screaming that gets my attention.

  In this neighborhood, it’s not uncommon to hear people yelling in the middle of the night — domestic disturbances, dust-ups that start and resolve as quickly as a dog fight over a meal. Sometimes you call the cops, but mostly you just check the lock on the door and pull the curtains tighter. In the morning, when the husband’s sobered up or the wife is finding the money to post baby-daddy’s bail, neither of them are looking at the long arm of the law as the hero.

  Usually when the cops get called, nobody’s happy to see them. There was a lady who lived across the street from us for a while whose ex-boyfriend had a real bad habit of coming around and begging forgiveness in the middle of the night. I know, because everyone in the neighborhood knows; we could all hear their discussion points debated loudly through closed doors for the neighbors to overhear.

  It got nasty one night, the ex yelling some ugly threats, and he took a tire iron to her car. When the window got smashed, that’s when I called the cops. You have to have a firm set of rules in place, guidelines for your boundaries on what risks are acceptable. That tire iron could just as easy have gone through a house window, or through a skull. You don’t want to be the guy who witnesses your neighbor getting murdered, and you really don’t want to be the guy who gets brained trying to help.

  Anyway, the cops showed up, guns drawn, yelling at him to drop the tire iron and get on the ground and then, next thing you know, the lady was out through the front door and running down the driveway, screaming at the cops. She came out swinging, caught one in the side of the head, and it took both of them to wrestle her down to the pavement so she’d stop hitting them. They didn’t shoot either of them — small mercies — but the end of it was both of them getting man-handled into a patrol car.

  So, no, you don’t call the cops.

  Zoe’s at the living room window peeking out through the curtains, trying to get a clear look at what’s going on outside. I come up behind her, looking over the top of her head. It’s hard to make out much in the dark, but I don’t want to turn on the porch light, don’t want to make it any more obvious that we’re rubber-necking.

  At first I think somebody’s already called the police, but the car pulled up to the curb isn’t a squad car. It’s the same make and model, the sleek angles of a Dodge Charger, souped-up muscle car with its killer whale paint job: white and black, the warning colors of nature. But there’s no light bar on top, and the logo painted on the side bears a different government seal.

  Coalition.

  “Davin…” Zoe says, her voice a low warning, and she reaches a hand back, catches at the hem of my shirt. For comfort, or to keep me from bolting like a frightened rabbit? Hard to say. I’m frozen stiff where I stand, squinting out into the dark.

  The car is parked in front of our house, the tail lights two red eyes in the dark, and I’m bracing myself for the sound of knocking, the barking of Undead-sniffing dogs, the bouncing beam of a flashlight, but none of it comes.

  They’re not here for me.

  Then a scream, and my attention snaps to the house across the street, a house where there hasn’t been any trouble in years, its old tenant long gone and replaced with an elderly couple.

  That’s who’s outside now. An old woman on her knees on the porch, her hands clasped close to her chest. The porch light casts a sickly glow over her form, and the long shadows of two Coalition officers cut through the pool of light.

  An officer reaches for her, grasping her at the elbow and wrenching her to her feet, and when he does a brittle bone snaps in his grasp. I can see it, the unnatural angle of her limb, and even across the street and through the closed window I can hear it in the wail of protest she calls out into the night. I can imagine her bones, addled with osteoporosis, melting into grit inside the pockets of her flesh.

  Zoe turns away from the window and for a moment I think she’s going to bury her face in my chest, I think she’s going to cry it out, but I keep forgetting she’s not a little kid anymore. Zoe’s traded her sadness for anger, her fear for action, and she’s ducked under my arm and made a dive for the door before I can think of stopping her.

  She shoves through the door and is running to the end of the driveway before I can get my corpse coordinated enough to follow.

  “What the FUCK are you doing?!” she yells, and her words ring in the night. Somewhere down the block, a light goes out. A dog barks.

  “Go back inside, ma’am,” one of the officers says, holding up a gloved hand in a dismissive gesture. “Everything’s under control here.”

  “Like hell it is!”

  I reach the door and the cold air outside is like a shock to the system. I hit an invisible wall, some kind of division between worlds, and I freeze in place in the doorway, caught between inertia and indecision.

  “Zoe —”

  “What are you DOING?” Zoe repeats. She’s standing at the foot of the driveway, maybe held there by her own invisible wall. “You’re hurting her!”

  “She’s fine, ma’am.”

  The old woman lets out a yell, a wild animal snarl, and wrenches around, twisting her boneless broken arm like stretched taffy in her attempts to break free. Her teeth snap together, a dog biting at the air, the unnatural whiteness of dentures capturing the light.

  “This woman is sick, and she needs treatment.”

  “That woman is Undead,” Zoe snaps back, crossing her arms over her chest, either in defense or to ward off the cold. “And you’re a goddamn liar.”

  I finally manage to get myself moving again, like breaking loose from some quicksand, and I close the gap in the driveway.

  “Sorry!” I call, and hate the appeasement in my voice, hate the cringing puppy that’s using my mouth and throat. Zoe’s going to be furious, but what the fuck else am I supposed to do? I grab her by the shoulders and try to steer her away.


  The Coalition officer manages to get both of the old lady’s arms behind her back, and the other maneuvers to stand between us, stepping out into the curb and waiting for us to retreat.

  I think, wildly: Wouldn’t it be funny if a car came right now. If it hit him and knocked him into the pavement and then he was the corpse, and he had to sit up and get into handcuffs for the crime of being alive past his expiration date. Wouldn’t that just be fucking hilarious.

  But the thought is a fleeting daydream, and I’m backpedaling, hauling Zoe back into the house like an over-eager guard dog, and I want so badly to apologize because she’s not the one who’s wrong here; everything is fucked but she’s in the right and it hurts so bad knowing that and also knowing that it doesn’t make any difference.

  “Damn it, Davin,” she snaps, breaking out of my grip, but she storms inside the house anyway, and I lock up the door behind her. “God DAMN it!”

  “We can’t do anything,” I say. “We can’t, and it’s…”

  She closes her eyes, letting out a long breath through her nose. She clutches fistfuls of curly hair at her temples and tugs, eyes squeezed against the bubbling rage, but she gets it under control. She inherited our dad’s temper, but she was always a thousand times better at keeping it contained.

  “Dangerous,” she finishes for me, on the exhaled breath. “I know. I know. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

  And then it ripples through her, the spasm of anger, and her balled fist strikes backward, thumping heavily into the wall. “I didn’t even think to grab my fucking camera.”

  The Coalition car pulls away from the curb, sliding out into the night, and I try not to think of the old woman inside and her brittle, dead bones.