“Devon, I know you’re scared. We all are.”
“God, I can’t stand all that noise,” Devon said, clamping his hands over his ears. “That constant pounding, it’s driving me crazy.”
Diva realized then that she had grown so accustomed to the pounding on the doors that she no longer really heard it. “Maybe you should come downstairs with me.”
“Why? So I’ll be that much closer to those things when they finally get inside?”
“No, so you won’t be alone.”
“I think we’re being punished,” Devon said, so softly that Diva could barely hear him over the pounding. Now that Devon had drawn her attention back to the noise, it was all she could hear.
“Punished? For what?”
Devon didn’t answer at first. He continued to rock, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks, then he looked up suddenly, his expression naked and raw, and said, “When I came out to my grandmother, she told me I was sinful and wicked. She said I was an abomination and that God would punish me. Is that what’s happening? Is God punishing us because we’re bad?”
“Oh, honey, of course not,” Diva said, running a hand down Devon’s cheek, wiping away the tears. “People who say things like that are talking out of ignorance. God made us, and therefore he loves us just the way we are.”
“Then why is this happening?”
Diva really wished she had an answer for him, but she didn’t.
When the lights went out, Devon screamed and clung to her arm. “This is it, they’re coming in after us.”
“Calm down,” Diva said, but she was trembling herself and her heart was galloping in her chest. “Let’s go downstairs and see what’s happening.”
“No, they’re down there, I just know it.”
With some effort, Diva managed to free her arm from Devon’s vise-like grip. She didn’t want to leave the poor soul up here, especially in this condition, but she needed to get downstairs and check on everyone. “Devon, I’m going back downstairs. You’re free to join us if you feel up to it. If not, I’ll be up to check on you a little later. Okay?”
“We’re all gonna die,” was Devon’s only response.
The darkness was total, a complete absence of light like nothing Diva had ever experienced. Luckily, she knew every inch of this club like her own backyard. She successfully managed to maneuver her way to the stairs without running into anything. She descended slowly, placing each step carefully, so she wouldn’t fall in her heels. She got to the bottom just as someone was coming out of the restroom alcove.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s Daniel Craig,” Jarvis said in his distinctive British lilt.
“Please, if it was Daniel Craig I’d have you stripped and spread over the bar by now.”
A light flared in the darkness to their left, and she saw Gil standing there, holding up a cigarette lighter, the small flame creating a halo around his head. “Everybody okay?”
Another light flared by the bar, and she could just make out the rest of the group. Jimmy, Lance, and Autumn sitting on the floor; Curtis, Toby, and Clive sitting at the bar, Toby holding up his own lighter. All of them looked frightened.
“What happened to the lights?” Autumn asked, and her voice quavered like the light.
“I don’t know,” Diva said. “Maybe those things out there cut the power.”
Gil shook his head. “No, they’re not smart enough for that.”
“How can you be sure?” Lance asked.
“For one, if they were smart enough to cut the power, surely they’d be smart enough to figure out how to unlock the door. Two, I saw those things. They were like wild animals, all instinct and savagery. There was no intellect going on there.”
“Well, then what happened to the lights? Did you guys just not pay the electric bill this month?”
In the wavering illumination of the lighter, Diva could see the way Gil’s mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed, a sure sign he was royally pissed. “Listen up, smart ass, the last thing we need right now is your attitude.”
Lance appeared cowed by the forcefulness of Gil’s words. “I didn’t mean anything by it, but the fact remains that the lights are out.”
“Maybe it was just random,” Diva said. “I mean, if those things are out there trying every way they can to get inside, they may have tripped the breaker out front.”
“Or someone could have driven their car into a transformer,” Gil said. “There are a million possibilities.”
“The important thing is that we’re all okay,” Curtis offered.
Jimmy looked up from his nearly-empty vodka bottle for the first time since the lights had gone out. “As okay as a bunch of strangers trapped in a club by the living dead can be, that is.”
Toby cursed and then his lighter went out. When it flared again, Clive was holding it, and Toby was sucking on his thumb. “Sorry, burned myself.”
“Do you have any candles?” Autumn asked, hugging her legs to her chest. Diva suspected that the woman had been afraid of the dark even before the events of the night.
“Yes, dear, there are some behind the bar.”
“I’ll get ‘em,” Gil said, extinguishing his light and disappearing, as if the darkness had swallowed him whole. Diva sensed him moving past her and then he was revealed in the light from the lighter Clive held.
“Where’s the other guy?” Curtis asked. “Devon. Is he still upstairs?”
“Yes. He’s having a hard time dealing with all this. He needs a little time alone.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes, dear. He’ll be just fine.”
Glancing back toward the staircase, which she couldn’t actually see in the darkness, Diva wondered if her words were true. Maybe Devon wouldn’t be fine.
Maybe none of them would be.
Gil rummaged around behind the bar until he found a box of long, tapered candles. He had no candleholders, so he lit them, held them at an angle so wax would drip onto the top of the bar, then stuck the base of each candle into the wax. The box held six candles, and he spaced them evenly down the length of the bar. The candles didn’t provide much light, but they did manage to push back the darkness somewhat.
“Do you think someone will come for us soon?” Autumn asked. Gil had come to think of her as The Whiner.
“Like who?” Lance asked.
“Well, Toby called 911, so the authorities know we’re trapped here.”
Gil snorted. “I think we’re probably pretty low on their list of priorities.”
“They know we’re here,” The Whiner said again, her voice becoming shrill. “They won’t just leave us here. They’ll send someone to save us.”
Gil turned to Lance, who was busy groping the bleach-blonde. “You gonna comfort your friend or what?”
Lance cut his eyes at Autumn and said, “Get a grip. Nobody’s coming.”
The Whiner started sobbing quietly into her hands, and Gil considered kicking Lance’s ass on general principle. Diva went to Autumn and took her hand. “Come on, let’s go to the Little Girl’s Room and wash your face.” The Whiner allowed herself to be led across the club. As she passed, Diva looked at Gil and mouthed the word, “FUBAR.” Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
Gil poured himself a beer and drank it down in two gulps. He would have comforted The Whiner himself, telling her that everything was going to be okay, that the National Guard would be swooping in any minute to rescue them like some great deus ex machina, but he knew better. If this were some country club full of rich straight white guys, it would be the first place the government sent a rescue team. As it were, they were just a bunch of queers, and the government would leave them to die without thinking twice.
Gil’s view of the U.S. Government hadn’t always been so bleak. Once, as a young man, he had believed in America and its ideals to the point of idolatry. His sense of patriotism had been so strong that he’d enlisted in the Army for a tour of duty in Vietnam. He hadn’t been drafted; he’d en
listed. Those dope-smoking hippies with their peace signs and long hair had disgusted him. They were cowards. Gil had loved his country and been willing to die to uphold its values.
Vietnam was an experience he rarely thought about these days. He’d seen more death and cruelty and insanity than he had ever dreamed existed. Of course, as a balance, he’d also seen more heroism and sacrifice and love. He’d come back from his tour of duty not one of those bitter vets that suddenly joined the hippie’s cause; he had still believed in the justness and righteousness of the war. In fact, he wanted to return for another tour. The Army was his home; it was his family.
A family from which he had been disowned when they discovered he was gay. An immediate dishonorable discharge. No thank you for everything he’d given; no commendation for his dedication and sacrifice. Everything he had believed in had been stripped away overnight, the only life he had ever known blasted to bits. He didn’t understand how the fact that he liked dick—such a small part of who he was—could make him unworthy to serve his country.
Gil had soon discovered that as a gay man he was viewed as nothing more than a pile of dog shit on the sole of a shoe by the U.S. Government. He had no rights, no protections. He might as well have been branded with the scarlet letter F for “Faggot.” His friends—men he had served with in ‘nam, men he had thought of as his brothers—would no longer speak to him. He was fired from his job as a cafeteria worker at a high school because they didn’t want him “influencing” the kids, and when he’d tried to take the school board to court, the judge had laughed him out of the courtroom. The lawsuit made the national news, and his landlady had kicked him out of his apartment. One night, he had watched a man viciously beaten by three others outside a gay bar while the police simply watched, cheering the beaters on. Gil had tried to intervene, but the police had arrested him. He’d found out later that the man beaten had died.
So Gil couldn’t offer any comfort to Autumn. He had learned long ago that America hated her gay children and would sooner see them dead than acknowledge their basic humanity. People talked about progress. The four states where gays could legally marry. The celebrities that had come out and were living open lives. The programs for gay teens to help them accept themselves at a younger age. But it was all window dressing as far as Gil was concerned; the country hadn’t changed all that much. It threw its gay citizens a few crumbs now and then to appease them, but it would never open its arms to them.
Gil poured another beer and looked around the club. Except for Devon—whom Gil had always suspected was a little off his rocker—everyone had paired off. Diva and Autumn in the restroom, Lance and Jimmy, Clive and Toby, Curtis and Jarvis. Ever since he was young, Gil had tended to think of people not by their names but by labels he assigned to them in his head, and this bunch was no different. So there was The Nut upstairs, The Boss and The Whiner in the restroom, The Prick and The Slut (appropriately enough) on the floor, The Snob and The Wannabe at the bar, and The Virgin and The Brit also at the bar. And that left Gil as the odd man out, but that was fine with him.
He slipped away and checked the back entrance. Of the two doors into the club, this was the least sturdy and he wanted to make sure his fortifications were holding up. From the sound of the beating, there were fewer zombies here than at the front, which was perhaps the only reason the door was still on its hinges. He would give anything to take some of the tables apart and nail them up over the doorway, but there was no hammer or nails in the club. Besides, he was feeling rather weak and didn’t know if he was up to the task.
Gil was no fool, and he wasn’t one to lie to himself. He knew it was inevitable that those things were going to get in here. The ten people in the club were going to die; all they could do was postpone that eventuality. Gil had envisioned his death many times—starting back in the jungles of Vietnam—but he had certainly never imagined he’d go out this way.
In the early 80s, Gil had watched too many friends and lovers die from AIDS. He had a theory that the Government had released the virus to eradicate the undesirable population, and it had almost worked. There was a time when Gil had feared that homosexuals were on the verge of extinction, and his group of friends had dwindled from many to only a handful within a matter of a couple of years. Of course, these days there were “miracle drugs” that could prolong the lives of AIDS patients—so that the Government could make money off the undesirables even as it killed them—and Gil was one of the lucky ones who had lasted long enough to reap the pharmaceutical benefits. But it didn’t change the fact that there was a time bomb inside him, ticking away until it finally detonated. What was worse, wasting away from a disease no one cared enough to cure or being pulled apart by zombies? Gil wasn’t sure.
When Jarvis sat on the stool next to him, Curtis crossed his legs and shifted slightly away from the stripper to hide the incriminating bulge in his pants. That Curtis could even feel sexual desire at a time like this was insane, but he supposed the body never quit. He looked up at the stripper and smiled. In the darkness of the club, Jarvis’s dark skin rendered him almost invisible, just a Cheshire grin that was impossibly white. The candlelight lay across his skin like melted butter, and Curtis found himself wondering how the stripper would taste.
“Hungry?” Jarvis asked.
Curtis blinked and his jaw fell open, sure for a second that Jarvis had read his dirty mind. He tried to answer but managed only to make a sound that sounded like a belch.
“There’s a vending machine upstairs,” Jarvis said. “Full of chips and chocolate bars and the like. Do you want something?”
“Oh, no. I’m fine, but thank you for offering.”
“You’re awfully polite for an American. Are you sure you’re not British?”
“Guess I was just raised right.”
Silence settled between them, both of them fidgeting and casting quick glances at one another then away. Curtis noticed that Clive and Toby had moved further down the bar, and when he looked their way, Toby gave him the thumbs-up signal and Clive mouthed what looked like, “Go for it.”
“Looks like your friend’s method of dealing with this crisis is to get wasted,” Jarvis said, pointing back toward Jimmy. The bottle of vodka was empty, and he and Lance were sloppily making out on the floor.
“Believe me, there doesn’t have to be a crisis for my friend to get wasted. This is pretty much normal behavior for him.”
“But if ever there was a time to indulge, this is it.”
“Funny, Jimmy said something very similar earlier.”
“You know what they say. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow may never come.’”
“I’m not much of a drinker, really,” Curtis said. “Jimmy says I need more vices.”
“Oh, I’m sure you must have some vices.”
“Well, I did once eat an entire package of cookie dough all by myself.”
“Such debauchery,” Jarvis said with a warm laugh. “And yet you manage to remain so thin.”
“Crazy metabolism, I guess. But I’m all skin and bones, no muscle in between. Not like you.”
Jarvis shrugged. “I work out a lot. Too much, probably. Ever since I gave up—”
“Gave up what?”
“Nothing. Let’s just say that I gave up one addiction for another.”
“Fair enough.”
Over Jarvis’s shoulder, Curtis saw Jimmy and Lance stand and head toward the staircase. Jimmy was staggering slightly, leaning on Lance for support. Gil, who was inspecting the backdoor, spotted them and called out, “Where are you two going?”
“Just up to check on Devon,” Lance said. “We’ll be back down in a few minutes.”
Jimmy swatted Lance on the ass and said, “It better be longer than that or I’m going to be hugely disappointed.”
Without another word, the two started up the stairs, leaving the scant candlelight and disappearing in the inky blackness.
Jarvis smiled at Curtis and said, “Your friend has remarkable rec
uperative powers.”
“Apparently even hordes of the undead can’t stop his libido.”
“It’s a natural reaction.”
“What do you mean?”
“Faced with the possibility of one’s own mortality, sex is often a way to reaffirm your existence, to make yourself feel alive, keep death at bay.”
Curtis laughed, and the sound was like music to Jarvis. “You sound like a philosophy major.”
“Sorry, I tend to get all academic when I’m trying to flirt.”
Curtis suddenly seemed flustered, unable to meet Jarvis’s eyes. “Is that what you’re doing?”
“Trying to.”
“Why?”
This gave Jarvis pause. Why was he flirting with this shy, inexperienced guy? There were certainly far more pressing matters to deal with, it was hardly the time to be laying on the charm. But maybe his little speech about facing one’s mortality wasn’t total bullshit. Perhaps he needed a little comfort, a little warmth to reassure himself that he wasn’t among the dead just yet.
“Because I think you’re cute,” Jarvis said, reaching out and squeezing Curtis’s knee.
“Well, I guess I may not be the last man on earth, but pretty damn close.”
“Hey now, none of that kind of talk. You’re adorable, don’t you know that?”
Curtis shrugged, and even by the scant light, Jarvis thought he could detect the young man blushing. “I guess I’m not without cuteness, but I’ve never been a real head-turner.”
“You’ve turned my head.”
“It is dark in here.”
Jarvis suddenly leaned forward and pressed his lips against Curtis’s. At first the young man stiffened but then he relaxed into the kiss, parting his lips slightly and allowing Jarvis to sneak his tongue in. When Jarvis pulled back, he purred into Curtis’s ear, “The self-deprecation only makes you sexier.”
“In that case, I’m a worthless piece of shit.”
Asylum Page 4
