by Isaac Marion
I peer into her eyes, failing to read her meaning like the illiterate I am. ‘What’s… the bigger picture… of me killing Perry?’
‘R, come on,’ she says, mock-slapping the side of my head. ‘You’re a zombie. You have the plague. Or at least you did when you killed Perry. Maybe you’re different now, I sure hope you are, but back then you didn’t know you had choices. This isn’t “crime”, it’s not “murder”, it’s something way deeper and more inevitable.’ She taps her temple. ‘Me and Julie get that, okay? There’s a Zen saying, “No praise, no blame, just so.” We don’t care about assigning blame for the human condition, we just want to cure it.’
Julie emerges from the bathroom and sets the drinks on the bar with a sly grin. ‘Even grapefruit juice can use a little kick sometimes.’
Nora takes a test sip and turns away, covering her mouth. ‘Holy… Lord!’ she coughs. ‘How much did you put in here?’
‘Just a few minis of vodka,’ Julie whispers with girlish innocence. ‘Courtesy of our friend Archie, and Undead Airlines.’
‘Way to go, Archie.’
I shake my head. ‘Can please… stop calling me… ?’
‘Right, right,’ Julie says. ‘No more Archie. But what do we toast to this time? It’s your booze, R, you decide.’
I hold the glass in front of me. I sniff it, insisting to myself that I can still smell things besides death and potential death, that I’m still human, still whole. A citrus tang pricks my nostrils. Glowing Florida orchards in summer. The toast that enters my head seems unbearably corny, but it comes out anyway. ‘To… life.’
Nora stifles a laugh. ‘Really?’
Julie shrugs. ‘Unbearably corny, but what the hell.’ She raises her glass and clinks it against mine. ‘To life, Mr Zombie.’
‘L’chaim!’ Nora bellows, and drains her glass.
Julie drains her glass.
I drain my glass.
The vodka slams into my brain like a round of buckshot. This time it’s no placebo. The drink is strong and I feel it. I am feeling it. How is that possible?
Julie orders another round of grapefruits, then promptly converts them into Greyhounds, and she is generous with the pours. I expect the girls to be as lightweight as I am, since alcohol is contraband here, but I realise it’s probably quite routine to visit the liquor store while out salvaging the city. They quickly outpace me as I sip my second drink, marvelling at the sensations that swirl through my body. The noise of the bar fades and I just watch Julie, the focal point in my blurry composition. She is laughing. A free, unreserved kind of laugh that I don’t think I’ve heard before, throwing her head back and letting it just cascade out of her. She and Nora are recounting some shared memory. She turns to me and says something, inviting me into the joke with a word and a flash of white teeth, but I don’t respond. I just look at her, resting my chin in my hand, my elbow on the bar, smiling.
Contentment. Is this what it might feel like?
After finishing my drink I feel a pressure in my lower regions, and I realise I have to piss. Since the Dead don’t drink, urination is a rare event. I hope I can remember how to do it.
I wobble into the bathroom and lean my forehead against the wall in front of the urinal. I unzip, and I look down, and there it is. That mythical instrument of life and death and first-date back-seat fucking. It hangs limp, useless now, silently judging me for all the ways I’ve misused it over the years. I think of my wife and her new lover, slapping their cold bodies together like poultry in a packing plant. I think of the anonymous blurs in my past life, probably all dead or Dead by now. Then I think of Julie curled next to me in that king-sized bed. I think of her body in that comically mismatched underwear, her breath against my eyes as I study every line in her face, wondering what mysteries lie in the glowing nuclei of her each and every cell.
There in the bathroom, surrounded by the stench of piss and shit, I wonder: Is it too late for me? Can I somehow snatch another chance from the skymouth’s grinding teeth? I want a new past, new memories, a new first-handshake with love. I want to start over, in every possible way.
When I come out of the bathroom the floor is spinning. Voices are muffled. Julie and Nora are deep in conversation, leaning close and laughing. A man in his early thirties approaches the bar and makes some kind of leering comment to Julie. Nora glares at him and says something that looks sarcastic, and Julie shoos him away. The man shrugs and retreats to the pool table where his friend is waiting. Julie calls out something insulting and the friend laughs, but the man just grins coldly and calls back a retort. Julie looks frozen for a moment, then she and Nora turn their backs to the pool table and Nora starts whispering in Julie’s ear.
‘What’s… wrong?’ I ask, approaching the bar. I can sense both men at the pool table watching me.
‘Nothing,’ Julie says, but she sounds shaken. ‘It’s fine.’
‘R, could you give us a quick minute?’ Nora asks.
I look back and forth between them. They wait. I turn and walk out of the bar, feeling too many things at once. On the patio I slump against the railing, the streets a dizzying seven floors down. Most of the city’s lights are out, but the street lamps flicker and pulse like bioluminescence. Julie’s mini-cassette recorder is an insistent weight in my shirt pocket. I pull it out and stare at it. I know I shouldn’t but I’m… I feel like I just need—
Closing my eyes, swaying gently with one arm on the railing, I rewind the tape for a moment and press play.
‘—really that crazy? Just because he’s… whatever he is? I mean, isn’t “zombie” just a silly name we—’
I press rewind again and it occurs to me that the gap between the beginning of this entry and the end of the previous one comprises the entire time I’ve known Julie. Every meaningful moment of my life fits inside a few seconds of tape hiss.
I press stop, then play.
‘—thinks no one knows but everyone knows, they’re just afraid to do anything. He’s getting worse, too. He said he loved me tonight. Actually said those words. Said I was beautiful and I was everything he loved about Mom and if anything ever happened to me he’d lose his mind. And I know he meant it, I know all of that’s really there inside him… but the fact that he had to be raging shitfaced drunk to let any of it out… it just made the whole thing seem sick. I fucking hated it.’
There is a long pause on the tape. I glance over my shoulder at the bar door, feeling ashamed but desperate. I know these are confidences I should have to earn through months of slow intimacy, but I can’t help myself. I just want to listen to her.
‘I’ve thought about making a report,’ she continues. ‘March into the community centre and make Rosy go arrest him. I mean, I’m all for drinking, I love it, but with Dad it’s… different. It’s not a celebration for him, it seems like it’s painful and scary, like he’s numbing himself for some horrible medieval surgery. And yeah… I know why, and it’s not like I haven’t done worse stuff for the same reasons, but it’s just… it’s so…’ Her voice wavers and breaks off, and she sniffles hard like a self-rebuke. ‘God,’ she whispers. ‘Shit.’
Several seconds of tape hiss. I listen closer. Then the door flies open and I whirl around, tossing the recorder out into the dark. But it’s not Julie. It’s the two men from the pool table. They stumble out the door, jostling each other and laughing through the sides of their mouths as they light up cigarettes.
‘Hey,’ the one who was talking to Julie calls to me, and he and his friend start ambling in my direction. He’s tall, good-looking, his muscular arms sleeved in tattoos: snakes and skeletons and the logos of extinct rock bands. ‘What’s up, man? You Nora’s new guy?’
I hesitate, then shrug. They both laugh like I’ve made a dirty joke.
‘Yeah, who ever knows with that chick, right?’ He punches his friend in the chest while continuing to saunter towards me. ‘So you know Julie, man? You Julie’s friend?’
I nod.
‘Known her long?
’
I shrug, but I feel a coil inside me tensing.
He stops a few feet away from me and leans against the wall, taking a slow drag on his cigarette. ‘That one used to be pretty wild, too, a few years back. I was her firearms teacher.’
I need to leave. I need to turn around right now and leave.
‘She got all pure after she started dating that Kelvin kid, but man, for a year or so she was ripe fruit.’ His exhalations form a haze of smoke that stings my dry eyes. ‘A hundred bucks won’t even buy a pack of cigarettes any more, but it sure went a long way with that bitch.’
I lunge forward and crack his head into the wall. It’s easy, I just palm his face and thrust forward, punching the wall with the back of his skull. I don’t know if I’ve killed him and I don’t care. When his friend tries to grab me I do the exact same to him, two big dents in the Orchard’s aluminium siding. Both men slump to the ground. I wobble my way down the stairs and out onto the catwalk. Some kids leaning on the support cables smoking joints stare at me as I shove past them. Excuse me, I try to say, but I can’t seem to find the syllables. I slide down the four apartment floors and lurch out onto Fairy Street or Tinkerbell Street or whatever the fuck it’s called. I just need to get away from all these people for a minute, collect my thoughts. I’m so hungry. God, I’m starving.
After a few minutes of wandering, I’m completely lost and disorientated. A light rain is falling and I’m alone on some dark narrow street. The asphalt glitters black and wet under the crooked street lamps. Up ahead, two guards converse in a rain-flecked cone of light, grunting to each other with the affected toughness of scared boys straining to be men.
‘… out in Corridor 2 all last week, pouring foundations. We’re less than a mile away from Goldman Dome but we’ve barely got a fuckin’ crew any more. Grigio keeps pulling guys off Construction and dumping ’em into Security.’
‘What about the Goldman crew? How’s their end coming?’
‘Goldman is shit. They’re barely out their front door. I’ve been hearing the merger’s in bad shape anyway, thanks to Grigio’s bad diplomacy. Starting to wonder if he even wants the mergers any more, the way he handled Corridor 1. Wouldn’t surprise me if he arranged the collapse himself.’
‘You know that’s bullshit. Don’t be spreading that story around.’
‘Yeah, well, either way, Construction’s gone to shit since Kelvin got squished. We’re just digging holes and filling ’em in.’
‘I’d still rather be out building something than playing rent-a-cop in here all night. You get any action out there?’
‘Just a couple of Fleshies wandering out of the woods. Pop, pop, game over.’
‘No Boneys?’
‘Haven’t seen one of them in at least a year. They stick to their hives now’days. Fuckin’ bullshit.’
‘What, you like running into those things?’
‘Hell of a lot more fun than Fleshies. Fuckers can move.’
‘Fun? Are you shitting me? Those things are wrong; I don’t even like touching ’em with my bullets.’
‘Is that why your hit rate’s one in twenty?’
‘Doesn’t even seem like they’re human remains any more, you know? They’re like aliens or something. Creeps the shit out of me.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s probably ’cause you’re a pussy.’
‘Fuck you. I’m going to take a leak.’
The guard disappears into the dark. His partner stands in the spotlight, pulling his parka tighter as the rain comes down. I’m still walking. I’m not interested in these men; I’m looking for a quiet corner where I can close my eyes and gather myself. But as I approach the light, the guard notices me, and I realise there’s a problem. I’m drunk. My carefully studied gait has been replaced by an unsteady stagger. I lumber forward, my head lolling from side to side.
I look like… exactly what I am.
‘Halt!’ the guard shouts.
I halt.
He moves towards me a little. ‘Step into the light please, sir.’
I step into the light, standing on the very edge of the yellow circle. I try to stand as straight as I can, as motionless as I can. Then I realise something else. The rain is dripping off my hair. The rain is running down my face. The rain is washing away my make-up, revealing the pale grey flesh underneath. I stumble back a step, slightly out of the lamplight.
The guard is about five feet away from me. His hand is on his gun. He moves closer and peers at me through slitted eyes. ‘Have you been drinking alcohol tonight, sir?’
I open my mouth to say, No, sir, absolutely not, just a few glasses of delicious and heart-healthy grapefruit juice with my good friend Julie Cabernet. But the words evade me. My tongue is thick and dead in my mouth, and all that comes out is, ‘Uhhhnnn…’
‘What the fuck—’ The guard’s eyes flash wide, he whips out his flashlight and shines it into my grey-streaked face, and I have no choice. I leap out of the shadows and pounce on him, knocking his gun aside and biting down on his throat. His life force rushes into my starved body and brain, soothing the agony of my hideous cravings. I start to tear into him, chewing deltoids and tender abdominals while the blood still pulses through them — but then I stop.
Julie stands in the bedroom doorway, watching me with a tentative smile.
I shut my eyes and grit my teeth.
No.
I drop the body to the ground and back away from it. I can no longer hide behind my ignorance. I know now that I have a choice, and I choose to change no matter what the cost. If I’m a thriving branch on the Tree of Death, I’ll drop my leaves. If I have to starve myself to kill its twisted roots, I will.
The foetus in my stomach kicks, and I hear Perry’s voice, gentle and reassuring. You won’t starve, R. In my short life I made so many choices just because I thought they were required, but my dad was right: there’s no rulebook for the world. It’s in our heads, our collective human hive-mind. If there are rules, we’re the ones making them. We can change them whenever we want to.
I spit out the meat in my mouth and wipe the blood off my face. Perry kicks me in the gut again and I vomit. I lean over and purge myself of everything. The meat, the blood, the vodka. As soon as I straighten up and wipe my mouth, I’m sober. The fuzz is gone. My head is clear as a glossy new record.
The guard’s body begins to twitch back to life. His shoulders slowly rise, dragging the rest of his limp parts with them, as if he’s being pinched and pulled upwards by unseen fingers. I need to kill him. I know I need to kill him, but I can’t do it. After the vow I’ve just made, the thought of tearing into this man again and tasting his still-warm blood leaves me paralysed with horror. He shudders and retches, choking and clawing the dirt, straining and dry-heaving, his eyes bulging wide as the grey sludge of new death slithers into them. A wet, wretched groan escapes his mouth, and it’s too much for me. I turn and run. Even in my bravest moment, I am a coward.
The rain is in full force. My feet splash in the streets and spatter mud on my freshly washed clothes. My hair hangs in my face like seaweed. In front of a big aluminium building with a plywood cross on the roof, I kneel in a puddle and splash water on my face. I wash my mouth out with dirty gutter run-off and spit until I can’t taste anything. That holy wooden ‘T’ looms overhead, and I wonder if the Lord might ever find cause to approve of me, wherever and whatever he is.
Have you met him yet, Perry? Is he alive and well? Tell me he’s not just the mouth of the sky. Tell me there’s more looking down on us than that empty blue skull.
Wisely, Perry doesn’t answer. I accept the silence, I get off my knees, and I keep running.
Avoiding street lights, I make my way back to Julie’s house. I curl up against the wall, finding some shelter from the balcony overhead, and I wait there while the rain pounds the house’s metal roof. After what seems like hours, I hear the girls’ voices in the distance, but this time their rhythms stir no joy in me. The dance is a dirge, the music is min
or.
They run towards the front door, Nora with her denim jacket pulled over her head, Julie with the hood of her red sweatshirt cinched tight on her face. Nora reaches the door first and rushes inside. Julie stops. I don’t know if she sees me in the dark or just smells the fruity stench of my body spray, but something draws her to look around the corner of the house. She sees me huddled in the dark like a scared puppy. She ambles over slowly, her hands stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets. She crouches down and peeks out at me through the narrow opening of her hood. ‘You okay?’ she says.
I nod dishonestly.
She sits next to me on the small patch of dry ground and leans against the house. She takes off her hood and lifts the wool beanie underneath to brush wet hair out of her eyes, then pulls it back down. ‘You scared me. You just disappeared.’
I look at her miserably, but I don’t say anything.
‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
I shake my head.
‘Did you, um… did you knock out Tim and his friend?’
I nod.
A smile of embarrassed pleasure creeps onto her face, as if I’ve just given her an over-large bouquet of roses or written her a bad love song. ‘That was… sweet,’ she says, holding back a giggle. A minute passes. She touches my knee. ‘We had fun today, didn’t we? Despite a few sticky moments?’
I can’t smile, but I nod.
‘I’m a little buzzed. You?’
I shake my head.
‘Too bad. It’s fun.’ Her smile deepens and her eyes become far away. ‘You know, I had my first drink when I was eight?’ There is just a faint slur in her voice. ‘My dad was a big wine buff and him and Mom used to throw tasting parties whenever Dad was between wars. They’d bring all their friends over and pop a prized vintage and get pretty well toasted. I’d sit there in the middle of the couch taking little sips off the half-glass I was allowed and just laugh at all the silly grownups getting sillier. Rosy would get so flushed! One glass and he looked like Santa Claus. He and Dad arm-wrestled on the coffee table once and broke a lamp. It was… so great.’
