“Damn! You kiss your mama with that mouth?” Pete finally exclaimed.
“My mother’s dead,” Dongmei said huffily, and Pete looked miserable and ashamed.
Mort was having the time of his life!
When the Zhao sisters finally put them up for the night, Pete snuck into Mort’s room and shut the door firmly. “That kid is like a cat in heat,” Pete complained, his voice a stage whisper.
Mort snickered.
“Hey, it ain’t funny. I’m no pedophile.”
“Didn’t you just screw a zombie earlier today? Besides, it’s the end of the world, dude. Do you want her to die a virgin?”
“Har-dee-fuckin’-har.”
Pete had stripped and started to climb into bed with Mort.
“Whoa! Wait! What are you doing?” Mort asked, clutching the sheets around him. “We got our own separate beds tonight!”
“I don’t like sleeping by myself anymore,” Pete said, sounding more than a little petulant. “I have bad dreams.”
“Go sleep with Dongmei then.”
“No way.”
“Really, I—”
“Oh, I get it. You think Dao-ming is going to sneak in here in the middle of the night.”
“No!”
“Mort want sucky-sucky, fucky-fucky?”
“That’s not even… that’s not very nice.”
“Yeah, right.” Pete jerked the covers from Mort’s hands and scooted into the bed. “Oh, Mort! Me want you so bad! Me love you long time!” Pete mocked him, his voice pitched high.
“You’re such an asshole!”
Pete chortled. Mort’s buddy fluffed his pillow and turned over, pulling the covers up over his shoulder.
“She’s not that good looking anyway,” Pete said after a moment.
Mort didn’t respond.
“And she’s a bitch.”
Exhausted, Pete was snoring within minutes.
Mort lay beside him, unable to sleep for what felt like hours. He stared up at the ceiling, then turned on his right side. Couldn’t get comfortable. Rolled onto his left side. Still couldn’t find a good spot. He finally decided he needed a drink and slipped carefully out of bed. There were cases of bottled water in the kitchen.
Mort crept to the door, wincing when the floor creaked. He glanced at Pete, teeth gritted, but Pete was still snoring softly. He inched the door open and stepped out into the hallway.
Dao-ming froze, staring at him. She was wearing a black silk teddy and little else. She’d been tiptoeing down the hallway toward his room.
“Oh! Hi, Mort,” she whispered awkwardly.
“Hi.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
“Oh.”
“So… umm... you want to fool around?”
Dao-ming smiled, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.
Be cool, Mort! This will never, ever happen again! Not in a million years!
“Um, sure.”
“Your room?”
“No, Pete’s in there.” He chuckled at the look she gave him. “We, uh, kinda got in the habit of sleeping together. Well… not sleeping together. Just…”
“It’s okay. I understand. Dongmei’s in my room. Come on. Let’s go to the guest bedroom.”
Dao-ming took Mort’s hand, which was suddenly very sweaty, and led him through the dark hallways of the large townhouse to a bedroom on the far side of the property. Once they were inside, she locked the door and slipped into his arms.
Mort held her close, enjoying the scent of her hair, the soft, firm pressure of her breasts against his belly. She seemed to shrink inside herself within his embrace, becoming smaller, more childlike. She took a deep breath, exhaled long and slow.
“You’re so big,” she said softly. “I feel safe in your arms.”
“You smell good,” Mort replied.
Smoooooth…
“I’m not normally such a slut,” Dongmei whispered. “I just want to make love with someone sweet and gentle, and you seem like a really nice guy. It’s been a rough month.”
“It’s okay. It’s the end of the world, right?”
She leaned her head back, so he put his lips to hers. He guided her to the bed as they kissed. Dao-ming moved away from him for a second to pull her gown off over her head. Her bare skin glowed faintly in the moonlight. Mort pushed his boxer shorts down and kicked them into the corner. He wished there was more light in the room so he could see her better. Then he felt her hand on him, down there, and he couldn’t really think straight anymore.
“Nice,” Dao-ming murmured.
“Ditto,” Mort replied, putting both palms on her breasts. He circled her nipples with his thumbs. They were hard as pebbles. “I should probably warn you. It’s been a long time since--”
“Hush!”
Dao-ming lay on the bed and pulled him between her thighs. Mort groaned as he sank down upon her. They fit perfectly, no fumbling around. And she was so hot! So hot and tight!
“Oh! Slow down, sweety. You’re kind of big,” Dao-ming gasped.
Mort replied: “Ohshitdon’tmove! Oh, no! Arrrhhh! Ah... ah, darn it.”
She stroked his hair as he panted on her shoulder. “Um, Mort… did you just cum?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I told you it’s been a long time.”
Dao-ming laughed softly. “That’s okay. We can try again in a few minutes.”
Mort was quiet a moment. “I don’t need to wait. I think it’s still hard.”
Wrapping her legs around his waist, Dao-ming smiled in the dark. “Atta boy…” she purred.
9
The Last Living Pimp Gets Saved
As Mort made love to the woman of his dreams, Lavender Baasim sat on the ledge of the rec center roof, staring disconsolately at the zombies down below.
He kicked his legs idly, watching the horde mill in circles on the sidewalk in front of the building. They shuffled around like ragged sleepwalkers. When two of them collided, they tottered off in opposite directions, like billiard balls rebounding off one another. There was not as many down there as there was earlier that day. A lot of them had drifted away after they busted into the rec center, but there was still plenty of them hanging around. Enough to keep him from climbing down off the roof. He was stuck for now.
He was stuck, and he was all alone.
All alone.
It was a terrible thought. It made him feel small and lost and vulnerable. Landslide was gone. T-Rex was gone. Even those two crackers he’d met today were gone. He didn’t know if the zombies got them too or not. He kind of hoped they got away. Not that it mattered. Everyone was gone now but him.
When the zombies busted into the rec center, T-Rex and Lavender had retreated to the small office back behind the basketball court. There was a low drop-ceiling in that room. T-Rex had lifted him into the ceiling, helping him escape, a moment before the zombies battered their way into the room.
Unfortunately there was nothing Lavender could do to help his companion in return. There was no way he could have pulled T-Rex up. The man weighed over four hundred pounds. And even if he could have lifted the big man off the ground somehow, there was absolutely no way the drop ceiling could have held that kind of weight. Lavender had almost fallen through the paneling himself, and he only weighed a buck fifty.
He had watched helplessly as the hungry dead swarmed around T-Rex, as they bore him down and ate him alive. They just kept pouring into the room, howling and snatching at the man, ripping his clothes off, fighting each other to get at him. T-Rex had held Lavender’s gaze for an unbelievable length of time, finding the strength somehow to stay on his feet as they devoured the flesh right off his bones. He had screamed, on and on and on, as they bit off chunks of his skin, as they disemboweled him and thrust his jiggling guts into their mouths, and Lavender had crouched there in the dusty, hot space between the drop-ceiling and the roof, holding the man’s gaze, staying there with him until a great gout o
f blood frothed up out of his mouth, and the big man sank into the mob like some great continent subsiding into a churning sea.
It was more than enough to give a nigga nightmares… maybe forever.
Lavender shuddered at the memory, tearing his eyes from the zombies below. He looked up at the sky, trying to push that terrible last image of T-Rex from his mind. Trying... and failing.
“His name was Theodore,” Lavender mused.
They’d been friends since they were children, T-Rex and Lavender. They’d both lived here at Magnolia Village their entire lives. Landslide, too. Landslide’s real name was Harold.
Lavender chuckled.
Harold Cooper... Such a cracker name!
He traced the city skyline with his eyes. There were a couple lights winking faintly, the windows of some distant apartment building, way up high above the streets where it was safe. Other survivors like him, he supposed, huddled beside candles or maybe gas lanterns. He wondered who they were, how they were getting by, but what did it matter? They were there. He was here. Their lives were not going to intersect in any meaningful way. They would never even know that he had noticed them, had sat here in the dark staring at their light.
At least it had stopped raining. The clouds were breaking up, revealing a bright half-moon and a smattering of winking stars. He was cold, his clothes wet, but there was plenty to drink up here on the roof. The rain had collected into several large puddles. He wouldn’t die of thirst anytime soon, but he had no food, and his belly was starting to make some very loud gurgling sounds.
No surprise there. Judging by the position of the moon and stars, he figured it was just about midnight. He hadn’t eaten in sixteen hours.
He prayed the zombies would wander away so he could climb down. Perhaps by morning they would be gone. Then he could come down, get himself something to eat and rearm himself. There was still plenty of weapons left scattered around the projects. Magnolia Village had been a war zone even before the zombie outbreak. Gang violence. The drug trade. After he’d eaten and gotten some rest, he’d climb up to the roof of his apartment. Have a little target practice. Clear the place out again.
But for now he was stuck. He was wet, cold, hungry and stuck.
He put his hands over his ears, trying to shut out the howls and groans of the zombies down below. Oh, that sound made him feel so crazy! It was maybe a good thing he was out of bullets, because if he had to listen to that moaning and groaning all night long, he might just put the Mac-10 in his mouth and pull the trigger. In the movies, zombies sounded scary, but in real life, they sounded like a bunch of lunatics having an orgy!
As Lavender held his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, he felt a queer prickling sensation in his head. The prickling felt like someone poking thin silver needles into his brain. For a moment, he remembered being in a hospital, a massive hospital with endless, labyrinthine hallways and ugly pale green walls. He remembered the tests they’d run on him after the accident, when he complained to his granny about the voices in his head. He was just a little boy then, the stitches in his scalp still itching, and the voices had been so loud, so insistent. It wasn’t like he was imagining other people talking inside his head either. The voices sounded real, like people were standing right behind him, or in the next room. Sometimes they seemed more real to him than the voices of the flesh-and-blood people who cared for him.
For a moment, Lavender wasn’t himself anymore. He was smaller, weaker. But he wasn’t afraid, because there was another person here with him. Someone bigger and stronger than he was. Someone who could protect him.
He suddenly felt like he was being watched and he scrambled from the ledge of the building, bringing up the barrel of the submachine gun. He knew it was out of bullets, but he felt better with the gun in his hand. Bigger. Braver.
“Who’s there?” he demanded. His voice was deeper now, more authoritative.
There was no one on the roof behind him, of course. How could there be?
You’re starting to imagine things, brother, he thought. You need to chill the fuck out.
But then he caught some movement at the periphery of his vision. Something moving in the sky, flying. Some kind of bird... or bat.
He craned his head back and watched as several dark objects descended through the moonlight. The figures were distant at first, tiny and indistinct, but grew larger by the second. As they drew nearer, he realized they were people. Flying people! And they were headed right for the roof!
“What the fuck?” he snarled. He almost fell back, he was so shocked. If he had, he would have pitched right over the ledge of the roof, and there wasn’t nothing beyond that but hard concrete and hungry zombies!
The flying people were approaching at a terrific rate of speed. Fast as they were going, he expected them to punch right through the roof, maybe even keep going down all the way through the rec center. At the last moment, however, they unfurled great black capes and settled with hardly a whisper onto the rooftop before him.
He blinked as a wave of dizziness swept over him.
Not capes, he realized. Wings! Great feathered wings!
There were six of them. They stood slightly apart, eyeing one another archly, as if they did not quite trust one another, or did not feel comfortable being so close together. There were two women and four men. The one standing closest to Lavender smiled.
“Lavender,” he sighed.
The creature’s voice was deep and smooth. It instantly put him at ease. A voice so suave could not possibly belong to anyone who might wish to harm him.
“You do not need that weapon, my friend,” the winged man said, stepping toward him.
Lavender watched as the flying man’s wings folded against his back and seemed to shimmer halfway out of sight. He rubbed his eyes with his free arm and looked again, but those black wings continued to shiver in and out of existence, like a mirage. He remembered his granny talking about angels and devils and he couldn’t help but wonder which one these flying people were. Maybe he’d finally just completely lost his marbles.
“You are mad,” the flying man said. “Your mind is broken. I can feel it.”
Lavender drew back as the little needles poked into his brain some more. He had forgotten all about the ledge. “You’re hurting me,” he gasped.
“I apologize.”
“What do you want from me?”
“From you?” the man asked. “Very little. Nothing you can’t spare. I’ve come to save you, Lavender. Would you like to be saved tonight?”
The man was close enough now that Lavender could make out his face in the moonlight. He had a thin angular face, long black hair down to his breast, straight and shiny. And he was white. Not just white like the crackers who had run out on him today. This dude was white like chalk, like someone had sucked all the blood out of him and filled him back up with milk. He had large, dark eyes that seemed to grow larger the longer you stared into them. Eyes like whirlpools. And very red lips, with bright shining teeth. Beautiful, but terrible: his face, his eyes, his teeth. His entire body seemed to glow a little in the moonlight, like there was a cool mist bleeding from his flesh, catching the light, diffusing it.
“But your name’s not really Lavender, is it?” the flying man asked, frowning a little.
“Nuh—no.”
“There are so many of you in there. It’s really quite marvelous. But which is the real you? Not Lavender. No, not that caricature. Not the strong one either. Your name is… Lawrence, isn’t it? Your mind broke when the ravenous ones devoured your grandmother. You ran out of your medication, the medicine that kept all the voices away, and then the unclean ones came...”
Lavender felt hot tears on his cheeks. “Why you makin’ me remember dat? I don’t wanna remember dat shit!” He stepped back, retreating from the memories, and the ledge of the building caught him in the calves. He toppled back, spinning his arms, the wind making his clothes snap and flutter.
The flying man swept Lavender into his a
rms. Lavender clutched at him without thinking. The angel drew him back from the ledge.
“Shhhh! It’s all right, Lawrence,” he murmured. “You don’t have to remember. We’re going to take you to a place where you’ll never have to remember anything ever again. Isn’t that right, HaMerkavah?”
“Sure. Whatever,” one of the flying ladies said with a sneer.
The man was so hard and cold. It was like being cradled in the arms of a marble statue. Lavender shivered in the man’s embrace. “Are you angels or devils?” he asked.
The cold white creature smiled. He inclined his head and whispered into Lawrence’s ear:“What if we’re both?”
10
Goodbye, DuChamp
Shortly after they woke, Dao-ming announced that she and her sister would accompany Mort and Pete on their journey. The threat of the DuChamp nuclear power plant had factored heavily into her decision, but so had her loneliness and the promise of a safer and more simple life in the country. Dongmei, who was still in panties and a t-shirt, was sitting at the dining room table noisily eating some dry cereal when her sister made the announcement. The teenager sat up in excitement and clapped her hands, eyes shining. She’d developed a fierce crush on Pete. In fact, she followed him everywhere he went the rest of the morning, as if she were afraid he might try to sneak away when she wasn’t looking. She even talked to him through the bathroom door while he was taking his morning constitutional, sitting Indian-style on the hallway floor and prattling on aimlessly until Pete finally yelled at her from the other side.
“Beat it, kid! I’m trying to take a dump in here fer Christ’s sake! Let a guy shit in peace, why don’tcha!”
Mort: Deluxe Illustrated Edition (The Fearlanders) Page 13
