Keep quiet about it, I say.
You serious? I’m really not sure what good that will—
Because it’s probably nothing. We don’t need the others more paranoid than they already are. Have enough to worry about. And we’re taking the precautions to shore up this bitch.
I hardly think that’s fair.
You want to know what’s not fair? This, man, fucking this. I span my arms to either side. I tell him it’s not fair that everyone’s dead, that shit will never be the same. I want to keep going—tell him it’s not fair that he, the AA predator of newly sober girls, is the one with KK. That I have to pretend like shit’s all good. That I have to play the mentally together leader, that all I want to do is lock myself in the fucking car with the bin and shoot enough Tina to make my heart explode. I tell him to trust me. That the noise we just heard was nothing, at least nothing the others need to know about yet.
4:15 PM
We take a group consensus—one teener isn’t enough per day. We settle on two.
5:33 PM
We’re bored and spun and the Albino won’t put on clothes, outright refusing, telling us we’re lucky he’s letting us stay here at all, and then he smiles, his irises outlined in red, and says, When them sons a bitches come, they won’t know I’m not one of them.
I can tell KK’s drifting off into the dark cocoon of her sped mind. Typewriter’s back to working his pick spot. His fingers are covered in skin and blood. Jared’s rocking in the other corner. I feel like masturbating. Each of us is having a completely different experience not five feet from one another. We need to get out of the shack. I smell my breath or maybe my crotch and it’s awful, stale butter popcorn covered in yeast. I think about the small pond Jared and I had passed on our walkabout. I ask the Albino if he dumps any chems in there.
Stupid fucking Crooked Cock, that’s my drinking water.
I feel like my mother when I suggest to the group we take a swim. I’m trying to raise morale, to lift spirits, and I am my mom. When I was growing up, she was coated in an exterior of pep, of good cheer. She’d been the first one to suggest activities. Bowling night. Game night. Picnic night. Everything with a title, everything trying to bring the family together. My father and I would trudge out of our own little worlds—me in my room playing Nintendo, him in his office doing bank work—and we’d climb into the family Suburban. We’d piss and moan. My mom would talk it up, how fun the science museum would be, how picking apples at Pine Tree would be perfect. But then something would happen. We’d start to have fun. My dad would forget about deals that didn’t go through. I’d forget about dying on the last boss of Mega Man. We’d be together doing something seemingly stupid but we’d make it fun, my mom the smiling family mascot. So this is what I’m thinking. I need to get us doing something other than shooting dope and caressing the barrels of our guns.
You guys want to go swimming?
Nobody responds.
Swimming? Anyone?
Typewriter mutters something to himself. He keeps touching the sore on his face, then examining his fingers, then back to digging.
I stand up. This gets their attention. I say, Let’s go. Everyone. We need to go swimming.
Busy, KK says.
Not acceptable. Everyone. Pond just behind the house. Will do everyone some good, get the stink off us, refreshing and shit.
I pull Typewriter’s hand away from his face. I tell him there’s nothing on or underneath his skin. He asks if I’m sure. I tell him I’m sure. I look over at catatonic Jared and I say, J-Bone, let’s go, man.
He gives me the widest shit-eating grin.
J-Bone, he says.
That’s right. Time to take a dip, J-Bizzle.
I could do that.
Fuck yeah, you can do that.
KK’s jaw is working overtime. She looks at me. I wonder what kind of shit is turning over in her head and then she gives a hint of a smile, at least her eyes do, softening from their cold-ass glare.
So we’re good? I say.
She nods.
Albino?
The, he says.
The Albino, you down?
Pass up a chance to see that fucking miraculous curving cock?
It’s not… I stop. What the fuck does it matter? We’re gathered at the door and I’m back to being my mom and I’m handing out after-school treats in the form of shotguns and then we’re all walking out of the house, into the woods, us a family, dysfunctional to the fucking core.
We head past the meth lab. I trail behind the group by a few paces. I like us—five motherfuckers who would steal a retarded kid’s helmet to pawn for a buck fifty—and we’re making this work. We’re beating the odds. We’re sticking to our new rations. We’re loaded and dangerous and there aren’t any walking dead and I tell myself not to think about the truck I heard earlier, that it was nothing, that it was somebody just trying to get by.
This is it? KK asks.
Yeah, not bad, right?
Scum all over the shit, yo.
Better than Chuck blood. Am I right?
Hey, Crooked Cock, take a look at perfection, the Albino says. I turn. He’s stretching out his cock. He’s completely shaved. I laugh. He says, Straight as a motherfucker. Jealous?
Jesus Christ, KK says.
The Albino lets go of his dick and gives a few hip gyrations, sending it in a helicopter, and he says, Ready for take-off, and then he laughs like this is the funniest thing ever and we do too and he sprints in his gimpy gait to the pond, jumping, his legs pulled to a cannonball. He lands in about a foot of water. He curses. I toss off my shirt. Typewriter already has his off and his B cups jiggle as he kicks off his sweats. I see his back, the scratches from the reanimated two days before. They’re still scabbing. I figure this is a good thing, remembering the trucker’s eye, how it healed itself in seconds.
Jared mumbles about J-Bone taking a skinny-dip. I give him a quick once-over. He’s in decent shape, his abs visible, his cock a tad on the tree-stump side of the spectrum. I try not to imagine KK loving it and sucking it and spreading her malnourished legs, but I’m fucked because there it is and she’s laughing, telling him to keep on his fucking clothes, and I make sure I’m rocking a decent chub before I drop my shorts and boxers. I start toward the pond. Typewriter, the Albino, and Jared are just bobbing heads farther out.
You coming? I yell to KK.
Some fucking privacy, yo.
My bad, my bad.
I pretend to shield my eyes as I walk by. I hope she notices my dick is bigger than Jared’s. I’m really watching her and she’s got her shirt off and her tits are like a prepubescent boy’s and her stomach is nothing but ribs littered with pink circular scars and I’m taking my sweet time pretending to acclimate to the water, my feet then my shins then my knees then my dick, and I’m watching KK pull off her Daisy Dukes and she’s not wearing panties and it’s bald and I’m making sure I’m fully submerged because I’m getting all sorts of excited.
I swim twenty yards out to the middle of the pond. Type tells me to come a little bit closer. He says, Totally pissed, bro. Feels like heaven.
I splash his face.
The Albino tells me I can’t hide that bent beast forever. Jared spits arcs of algae water. Then we hear a shriek. My heart nearly fucking stops. KK comes splashing into the water, her arms above her head, her body starving, broken, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen with the sun behind her head and the water nothing but reflected diamonds and I relax because we’re kids in a simple time when there’s no better joy than escaping an afternoon of chores in the coolness of fresh water.
She swims out to us.
I want her hand to brush any part of my body.
She finds refuge in Jared’s arms. They face each other. I know she has her legs wrapped around his waist and that’s as far as I’ll let my mind go. I think of anything else. Anything. I think about the fence we shored up with a ribbed sheet-metal panel. About the small shard of scante I’d pocketed
in the morning. That I can go smoke it after the swim. But it’s not really working, the distractions. I’m picturing Jared’s dick pressing against KK’s vertical smile. About it knocking on her door, maybe poking its head in for a quick visit.
Marco, Typewriter says.
He has his eyes closed. It’s not hard to see him as ten years old, always Marco, never Polo.
Marco.
The Albino whispers Polo.
Typewriter turns in his direction, waving his fat arms at the sound.
Polo, I say.
Typewriter spins again.
Marco.
Polo.
I duck under the water and swim a few feet.
Marco.
Polo, KK says. She’s out of Jared’s arms, off his stupid dick, now swimming away from a thrashing Typewriter.
Fish out of water, he says.
Fuck you, I say.
Typewriter lunges for me. I think I’m out of his reach but his Italian sausage fingers hit my face and I say, Fuck my life, and he says, Yeah boy.
Marco.
I hear Polos all around me. I hold my eyes tight. I’m calling out Marco and I’m moving a few feet this way, then a few feet that way, and really, I’m tracking KK’s voice, her soft calls of Polo, her voice playful, inviting. Marco. Polo. The Albino’s telling me that Polo’s got a nice straight dick for Marco’s pleasure. I’m pretty sure Typewriter isn’t responding, probably terrified of once again being it. I hear KK’s Polo. I know I’m close. I tell myself that a simple peek would speed the whole thing up, but this is cheating, a betrayal for a game meant for lazy summer afternoons, maybe a betrayal against innocence, and then I’m seeing the little girl playing with the rottweiler, the little girl ripping out its throat, how I thought this had been something to do with innocence, and it’s Polos all around me, Marco, me as Marco, and I’m exploring the world of an algae-filled pond, the world of postapocalypse, the world where nothing matters besides keeping enough shit in our system to not end up dead. I block out everything besides KK’s calls. I swim in slow motion. I’m a moth to her voice. I’ve got to be close. I want to look. To see her smile. To see the triangulation of dimples between cheeks and chin, to have these be directed at me.
Marco.
Polo.
Marco.
Polo.
I’m close. I’ve got to be a few feet away. I reach out with my hands. I think about being one of them, the walking dead, because I’m laughing with my arms outstretched. I’m trying to find another human being, something living. I’m so close but she’s stopped calling Polo and I wait, my flexed toes just long enough to touch the baby-shit-soft flooring of the pond.
I feel something close behind me. Then I feel skin pressing against my back. Then there’s pressure against my neck and KK whispers, Polo. Her hand wraps around my stomach and I can’t move because this is the most amazing touch I’ve ever received and I’m praying her skeleton fingers never finish their journey, that they stay there on my stomach, dip lower, that we share this touch underneath the surface of everyone else’s vision.
I reach my hand behind me. It makes contact with what I’m guessing is her ass. It’s nothing but a compact curving of body. I want everything to stop. For this moment to be my happily ever after. For me to reach lower.
But that doesn’t happen. She says, Shit. Got me. Marco.
Then she swims away.
I’m left there with a raging hard-on. I’m left there wondering what the fuck just happened. Was this her telling me that I love you, always will, you and you alone? Was this her being completely spun, nothing more than a physical pleasure response to the brushing of skin against skin? My mind is a keno wheel. I am Marco Polo. I am my mother. I am Chase Motherfucking Daniels.
And life is perfect.
A moment painted in watercolors.
Maybe Jared is right about our creation of utopia. That this here—five people swimming, splashing, laughing, forgetting about everything other than a simple game—is as good as anything can get. This is what Thomas More had been trying to describe. And here we are, the outcasts, the people America wants to pretend aren’t walking the streets, living an impossible dream.
Something catches my eye in the trees. I peer harder. Some movement, a flashing of blue, an unnatural color to vegetation. I’m like, What the fuck, and I peer harder, straining my eyes for everything they’re worth, but I don’t see anything else. I tell myself that dope knows no sense of serenity and will crop up in paranoia at the worst times.
Marco.
Polo.
Just fucking relax, I tell myself. Everything’s okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay.
Then I see it again, and this time I’m fucking sure of it, blue movement in a sea of green. It’s a pair of jeans. I start swimming as hard as I can to the shore. I need to get to the guns because whatever it is in those woods can’t be good and I’m panting like hell and when I reach the shallows, I stand, looking over to the trees, and I don’t see anything, and then I glance to our clothes and shotguns and two dudes are standing there, Buster in the hands of the taller one with a mesh cap, a trucker mud-flap silhouette of a naked girl on its front.
Well, fuckin’ A, he says. Pretty precious out there.
The other one laughs. He’s shorter, fatter, his bearded face a fifteen-pound bowling ball.
I stand in a few inches of water. I’m naked. I have no idea what to do, if these people are friends or motherfuckers who will slit our throats.
Must be cold, Mesh Cap says.
A little shrinkage, A?
What? Who are—
Friends of the Albino.
Albino, I yell. I turn around and he’s staring at me. His face is a ghostly shade of fear or maybe that’s how it always looks. I face the two guys again. The shorter one has a shotgun trained at my dick. I cover up with my hands. They start laughing then and yell for all of us to get the fuck out of the water.
I tell them we don’t want any trouble.
Don’t want any trouble?
Yeah, doesn’t want any trouble, Fat Face says.
They laugh.
For real, guys, just drop the guns, man. Come on. We’re all in this together.
I hear the others getting closer.
Mesh Cap says, Fuckin’ A, look at that one there.
I turn. KK’s standing there naked and exposed and she’s not covering herself in the slightest and I love her and I can hear the fat one talking about her being a freak, that he can just tell, and I tell him to shut the fuck up.
Big talk for a guy standing there naked.
With a shrunken dick, the shorter one says.
Fucking A right.
Albino, I say. He’s at my side now. He says, Fucking Canucks. Figured y’all be the first ones dead.
Little faith.
The fuck you want? the Albino says.
What do you think?
The Albino takes the lead. I wonder if he knows he’s massaging the head of his dick. He says, So my shit ain’t good enough for y’all before, but now it is?
Price has changed.
Fuck you.
Oh boy, now is that a way to talk to your neighbors from the north?
Ain’t got any more. Shot the last bit last night.
The big motherfucker with the hat laughs. He pumps the shotgun, my shotgun. He says, We’ve been watching you for over a day now. Not covering the stink of cooking very well, know what I’m saying?
Shit, the Albino says, no more ammonia. Only able to get half an O.
We’ll see about that. Got the boys checking out that rat’s nest you call a house right now.
Oh no you don’t.
Fucking A right we do.
So that’s what this is?
A motherfucking jacking? You betcha. You really thought it would go any other way?
The big one motions with Buster for us to get the rest of the way out of the water. I take a few tentative steps. The fat one’s eyes are all over KK’s pussy and I
tell him to watch his stare and he laughs and calls me an American hero. I am about to reach over and grab my clothes and the dude kicks my ribs and I cough, feel a little like puking, and he tells me to leave them, just keep walking.
So it’s us walking on branches and pinecones and us shivering because of the drying pond water and us naked and exposed and Typewriter has that look in his eye like he’s not about to give up his scante. The Albino isn’t talking, just chewing his face, just rubbing his dick. We should just give up the shit. It’s a big batch but it’s not worth dying over. Yeah, we’ll have to go rob a pharmacy again, which is pretty much a death sentence, but whatever. I wonder if the Albino is being serious about the ammonia, if we’ll have to pillage farms for chemicals and whether it will take longer than two days to cook another batch. That seems to be the magic number, forty-eight hours, until our minds fill with the poison that wiped out the rest of our species.
There’s a truck parked in front of the shack. I know I fucked up keeping that one to myself. I make eyes at Jared and he seems to be accusing me of the same thing. One lumberjack motherfucker leans against the hood. He’s smoking. He laughs at our naked bodies. Then two more dudes filling the same bill come out of the cabin and one says, Empty, just a cashed dime.
Buried it? he asks the Albino.
Told y’all we blasted it.
Shot an entire batch? the big one says.
Yup.
Then he flips the shotgun around and smashes the butt into the Albino’s face. KK screams. The Albino crawls to his knees. His nose seems to have moved over an inch or two. Blood streams down his face, over his mouth. The contrast of red on white is sublime. His pigment-lacking irises shine red.
Then Mesh Cap presses the barrel against the Albino’s face. He circles his eyes, squishes the broken nose, and then inserts the tip into the Albino’s mouth. He says, We’re going to try this again. Where. Is. The. Dope?
I know I need to do something. To grab the gun off the little fucker and shoot until the ground is nothing but Canadian blood. I don’t want to see the Albino killed. And it isn’t because he’s our cook, but because he’s one of us, and he took us in, and because I’ll be motherfucked if I let some other human make this shit any harder than it already is.
Fiend Page 10
