Balance

by Peter Giglio

  Back Cover

  A Zombie Novella by Peter Giglio

  THE BLAST

  A worldwide snowstorm that brings with it a terminal virus.

  THE DEAD

  Rise!

  But something deep within hasn’t died. The thing they loved most when alive still burns bright, at odds with a predacious hunger they can’t control or understand.

  GEOFF & AMANDA

  Have survived The Blast.

  The bad news: 650 miles of treacherous, zombie infested road separates them.

  And time is running out for Amanda!

  “Balance is a grim and melancholy zombie story. Peter Giglio brings his A-game to this disturbing tale.”—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times Bestselling author of Dead of Night and Dust & Decay

  “A harrowing new perspective on the apocalypse. Giglio goes for the heart as well as the jugular.”—David Dunwoody, author of Empire’s End and Unbound & Other Tales

  Balance

  by Peter Giglio

  Published by MuseItUp Publishing at Smashwords

  ISBN: 978-1-927361-88-7

  Copyright 2012 Peter Giglio

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Dedicated to the Shapiros—Eric, Rhoda, and Ben;

  thank you for helping me find Balance.

  Chapter One

  Geoff Singer was a sad man, never able to find balance in his lonely life. He was afflicted with a malady that drove people away: he tried too hard.

  He hadn’t always been that way.

  As a child, he was labeled average. Not an underachiever. Average. No hope for greatness. No fear of failure. Living in the shadow of his delinquent brother, Ray, he’d done his best to cultivate that description; to fade into the wallpaper, unseen and unheard. Anonymity seemed the best approach not to disappoint his parents, whose time and worry were consumed by Ray. Their dissatisfaction was already the stuff of legend.

  But as Geoff grew into his teenage years, loneliness gripped him. No one was drawn to dull. No one courted average. So he began to overcompensate, trying to break the chains of the façade he’d created. The result was disastrous. By emulating nothing, he’d become a nonentity. And as hard as he tried to fit in, his movements were strained, false, received with a fierce degree of rejection. He wasn’t merely ignored. He was actively avoided.

  As a man, he’d learned to fit in, to appear confident. But his identity was caged, guarded. An even greater problem existed: he didn’t know his true self, couldn’t put it on display even if he wanted to, no matter how hard he tried. Something deep inside cried out for release, but he didn’t know what that something was, or how to free it.

  Now, alone on the veranda of The Grind House, he clutched a mug of coffee for warmth as he waited for her, the one he’d hoped would help him discover who he was. They had spent a lot of time here: chain-smoking her cigarettes, talking about anything and everything. Affectionate nights in warmer times, the café patio alive with chattering customers, alive with Amanda—her wide emerald eyes, long black hair, luminous smile.

  Downtown Lincoln, lively on past Saturday nights in September, looked abandoned now. A patina of snow and ice glistened on empty streets, ashen flakes drifting earthward in yellow star-bursts of sodium vapor. It was like this everywhere, according to the news. Even though Farmers’ Almanac—the weather bible for those in or near farming communities—predicted a mild season, winter had settled on the world three months prematurely.

  But Geoff wasn’t concerned with the weather. He was consumed by one despairing thought: she was leaving.

  Amanda had broken the news two weeks earlier. It was last call at O’Rourke’s, a pub they frequented after work. That wonderful night had slipped away too quickly, lost in cheerful banter and copious draughts of Guinness.

  As he rose to get their final round, she rested a delicate but firm hand on his arm. “I need to tell you two things,” she had said, struggling, he could tell, to sustain her smile. Her eyes narrowed like they did when she was angry—a rare state of being for her, and an emotion she’d never directed at him. Contrary to her expression, she’d said three words that stunned him: “I love you.”

  She’d been mad, he ruminated, trying to block out the distant squeal of a vehicle’s failing belt; mad for feeling what she had; maybe the way she still did. Anger was a bizarre sentiment to accompany love, but, in his experience, not a foreign agent, either.

  His ex-wife had always refused to end a conversation without expressing her affection, even though most of their discourse was laced with contempt for him. “You let people walk all over you, Geoff,” she’d said. “You have no verve, no core. No fight. I don’t know what I ever saw in you, but…I love you.” It seemed she needed to profess how she felt, or ought to feel, as a reminder. She had even said, “I love you,” as she stood in the driveway, car packed, eyes filling with tears.

  But Amanda hadn’t cried when she said it. Her smile returned and her gaze widened as if a monumental weight had been hefted from her shoulders.

  He’d been filled with hope as he settled back into his chair, taking her hands in his.

  Fixing him with soul-piercing eyes, she’d said, “You won’t like the next thing I have to tell you.” Then she dropped the bomb: she was moving away, starting graduate studies in English at the University of Memphis, come spring.

  Ten years younger than him, Amanda had graduated from The University of Nebraska the previous year, and then taken a job at Bradbury Research, where they had met. As her supervisor, he tried to establish professional boundaries, but the spark between them was strong—he could feel it; she said she could, too. So they started hanging out.

  “When’re you leaving?” he had asked.

  “In two weeks.”

  “Why so soon?”

  “I’ve never lived away from home, and... I need time to get settled before school starts. Please don’t be mad at me, Geoff. Please.”

  He wasn’t mad at her; not then, not now. He understood, at least he wanted to. She was young, afraid of commitment, and ready for new adventures in a bigger city. Unlike him, Amanda was impulsive and adventurous. He admired her. Standing, he’d motioned for her to do the same, and then taken her in a tight embrace he never wanted to end. But it had ended, as all things do, and far too soon.

  He kissed her on the forehead as she was getting into her car that night, and promised to visit her in Memphis.

  “And, don’t forget, we still have two weeks before I leave,” she had said.

  “Promise me we’ll hang out a lot in those two weeks.”

  “I promise.”

  “You scared?”

  “Terrified, but also excited... I just don’t know what I’m going to do if things don’t work out.”

  “You call me and I come get you. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. That’s how it will go down.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I promise.”

  His cellphone, face down on the plastic table in front of him, vibrated. He and Amanda always kept their phones turned down when together, a practice she’d initiated. “I want to give you my full attention when I’m with you,” she had said. The ritual was silly. It made more sense to turn ringers off or put phones away. But disagreeing with her, even on trivial matters, felt wrong. He hated himself for avoiding conflict, but was scared to push Amanda
away. And yet, she was leaving anyway, just like his wife had. He picked up the phone with a shivering hand and read the new text message.

  Car won’t start...sorry, can’t make it. xoxo, Amanda

  With numb, frantic fingers, he responded: I can come get you, or we can chat on the phone? He felt good about the message, counterintuitive to his instinct to respond: Okay. Have a safe trip.

  “Sir, are you all right out here?” It was a waitress, bundled in a long winter coat, breathing white vapor, a concerned expression on her cherubic face.

  “I’ll be leaving soon,” he muttered.

  “Okay, but I’m going to have to ask you to come inside otherwise. It’s below zero out here.”

  “I understand.” He finished his coffee in one swallow and handed her the mug. A curt nod, and then he stood. “Thank you,” he said in a thin, tired voice. His phone began vibrating again.

  Amanda: I wish we could get together for a proper chat, but I’m leaving early tomorrow morning and I’m dog-tired. Sorry! Love you, dude!

  “Dude?” he whispered.

  “What?” the waitress asked, spinning on her heels as she opened the door of the café.

  A burst of warm air greeted Geoff’s frigid face. “Sorry,” he said, “just mumbling to myself—hey, quick question, though. When a girl says ‘Love you, dude,’ what does she mean?”

  “Is she your sister?”

  “No. Why?”

  “That’s how I always tell my brother I love him.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  The waitress, a nervous smile on her kind face, nodded.

  Walking away from The Grind House, he pressed the TALK button, put the phone to his ear, and waited for Amanda to answer.

  In a poll he’d compiled for Bradbury Research, an overwhelming number of participants between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six indicated a preference for text messaging versus talking on the phone, citing, as the primary reason, the greater sense of privacy and control it gave them. Amanda, twenty-four, was unrepentantly of the same mindset: four short rings and her voice-mail picked up.

  Unsure of what to say, he ended the call.

  Would it have mattered, he asked himself, had he said he loved her, too?

  * * * *

  “Who’re you texting?” Travis asked.

  His eyes betrayed suspicion—an unbecoming trait she’d never glimpsed in him. Now is not the time for doubt, Amanda Herbert reminded herself, putting an arm around his tense shoulders. “No one,” she said. One hand trailed across his arm as she placed the phone face down on her parents’ coffee table. She turned back to him, eyes wide, smiling. “You have my full attention now.”

  Travis looked dubious, and she knew why. He was still upset about the secret she was keeping from her parents.

  “Why can’t we tell them?” he whispered.

  “Because they won’t let me go without a fight, and... I don’t want that. What I want, more than anything in the world, is to leave with you. I love you.”

  It wasn’t that her parents wouldn’t let her go. After all, she was an adult, at least in terms of age. They would make things difficult and unbearable, though, wanting to discuss plans with her and Travis. Truth to tell, she didn’t have a plan. Despite what she’d told Geoff, she wasn’t enrolled in grad school; Travis was. Father would accuse her of acting impulsively, and Mother would assume she’d gone off her meds again, but she hadn’t. She wouldn’t. Waking in the ER, wrists bandaged, she’d learned not to tackle depression on her own terms. Maybe she was acting impulsively now, she thought, but for the right reason. She didn’t want to lose Travis.

  “Love you, too,” he said, voice rising in volume. “But, Amanda, you’re making me complicit in this. Think about it. They’ll always look upon me with resentment. And, for the love of God, you’re a grown—”

  “Hush.” She put a finger to his lips, and in a low, thin voice murmured, “I don’t want them to hear us.”

  She’d met Travis two months previously at a party. Far from being the best-looking guy in the world; but, there was something about him—the nervous way he smiled, the way he fidgeted in social settings. Confidence wasn’t a virtue Amanda valued. She saw Geoff as confident, the kind of guy who could and would converse with anyone, regardless of shared interests. Travis was...selective, and far more injured. She was drawn to injury.

  She could tell that her parents, sensing she and Travis were too much alike, didn’t approve of him. Not that they didn’t like him—her mother and father were very kind people. They just didn’t trust him.

  Her phone rattled against the glass surface of the coffee table.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” he asked, annoyed.

  She shook her head and then lunged at him. Open mouth finding his, her hesitation found its way out the door to die in the freezing September night.

  * * * *

  Bouncing up and down on a bean-bag chair, Shane Junior stared at a trio of gyrating puppets on the dirty screen of the console TV. Ginny Jenkins, a few feet away, changed her baby. Peeling back a disposable diaper, she was greeted by a solid, almost adult-looking turd. Her face lit up with pride. “Baby Gracie,” she cooed. “You’re growing up so fast, aren’t ya?”

  The show Shane Junior was watching came to an abrupt end, and he began to cry.

  “Hold on, Junior,” she pleaded.

  His needful wailing didn’t abate.

  She wished television programming would return to normal so it wouldn’t be necessary to play disc-jockey to an impatient two-year-old all day. Everything on TV was news now, and she didn’t think Junior would like that much. Hell, she didn’t care for it either—a bunch of talking heads rattling on about climate change and other things she couldn’t wrap her own head around. And she was more than a bit miffed that she hadn’t seen a new episode of How I Met Your Mother or Two and a Half Men in weeks.

  Everything was about the weather now—the goddamn weather. And damned-fool-Shane, a man she hardly recognized ever since his mother had died six months ago—not that she’d cared much for him when she could recognize him—was out there in it: at the West Plains Wal-Mart, picking up what he called “survival provisions.” She silently prayed his truck would careen off Arkansas-63 on his way back, killing him after a protracted period of lonely suffering. But then, seeing Shane’s eyes and nose in Gracie’s cherubic face, she hated herself for courting dark thoughts.

  When she met Shane five years earlier, he’d been a deputy with the Fulton County Police Department. She and her family—she was sixteen at the time—had just moved from Kentucky, and she didn’t know anyone in the area. Her older brother, Jason, introduced Shane as a hunting buddy and started to bring him around a lot.

  Shane took an immediate shine to her. He seemed the sort she should be with, on the right side of the law and financially stable. Though she’d been underage at the time, her parents had approved of, even encouraged, the relationship. And so, three days after her seventeenth birthday, they’d been married in an outdoor ceremony, complete with a five shotgun salute and a pot-luck lunch.

  Things hadn’t been all bad. When he was around, which wasn’t often, he was gentle with her. And he provided luxuries her family hadn’t been able to—a house not on wheels, new furniture, and a car. But Shane was a man with many secrets.

  She should’ve left him after the revelation he’d been abusing his authority, shaking down meth houses for cash. But, taking the advice of Tammy Wynette, she’d stood by her man through legal battles, promising the scared girl inside that she’d leave once the nightmare ended. But things only got worse. Following a final legal appeal, his firing from the police department made official, he’d seemed so sullen that she didn’t have the heart to leave. A week later, she found out she was pregnant.

  Now, she wrapped up another Huggie for the landfill and, with a grimace across her hardened-too-young face, crawled across the toy-strewn floor to the cluttered shelves of kid’s movies. “Wanna watch Barney?�
�� she asked, trying to sound cheerful. She had to snap her fingers twice to capture the toddler’s roving attention. Gaze finally upon her, his cries reduced to sniffles, he gave a quick nod—more of a jerk—and reached out to her. She brushed a grape-jelly fingerprint off the front of the disc, and then placed it in the player. The room alive with everyone’s favorite singing, purple dinosaur—oh God, kill me now—she returned to Gracie, pin-wheeling her chubby legs and smiling—always smiling.

  And that made Ginny smile, too.

  “Oh Gracie,” she said, a tear running down her cheek. “What would I do without you?”

  * * * *

  The pink panties Cassandra Parrish lifted from the laundry basket weren’t hers. Even though she had no right to be mad—after all, she was the other woman—she was furious. Written in black marker on the garment’s Fruit of the Loom label was EVE.

  Despite her anger, Cass burst out laughing. What adult still labeled their underwear? Clearly, Joe’s wife; no wonder he stepped out on her.

  Dumping Joe’s dirty clothes into the washing machine—he brought a load every two weeks when he passed through Springfield—she twirled Eve’s panties on the middle finger of her free hand.

  After starting the wash, she crept onto the patio of her mid-town apartment and lit a cigarette. Taking a deep drag, she scrutinized the garment, wishing it was stained with an embarrassing skid-mark. But no, Eve Plainview, little-miss-perfect-housewife—although she couldn’t do her husband’s wash properly—didn’t even shit.

  A wicked smile on her face, Cass lit the panties on fire with her Zippo, tossed it from the balcony, and watched it flutter like a dying bird into a snow-bank. With a shallow drag from her cigarette, she decided it was too cold outside.

  Curling up on the couch next to her corpulent cat, Bono, she snatched a jigger, half-filled with gin and rapidly melting icecubes, from the end table next to her. Draining the glass with one greedy gulp, she cringed as the piney liquid burned a trail from her throat to her stomach.