The Living Dead

by Kraus, Daniel

  Altogether Different Beasts

  Greer had always thought the map of Sunnybrook Mobile Home Resort posted at the park’s entrance resembled the kind of goat’s-head pentagram drawn by metal-music kids. Seventy-eight plots, with trailers ranging from four-bed, two-bath double-wides like Mr. Villard’s to thirty-two-foot egg cartons like Fadi Lolo’s, were arranged at slashing angles on all sides of the star-pattern roads. Each segment had its own dilapidated playground; the one appropriated by the Sunnybrook Club was in the pentagram’s lower-right phalange, three minutes to the gate if you ran like hell.

  That’s what Greer wanted to do, but the sight of the filth-covered, injured children stalled her the same way Mama Shaw had. Though diverse in size, the five moved identically, toddling like the earth’s surface was shifting beneath Them, Greer was beginning to believe it was.

  Sam Hell stood up, a hundred stories above Greer’s body. His arm arced upward, directing his gun at the littlest girl. Greer had seen many things she wished she hadn’t in this park—depraved acts by addicts, assaults she’d not done enough to stop—but nothing as horrible as this.

  The little girl reached the road. One of her hands was red hamburger, knitted together by gray tendons. Her cherubic right cheek had no partner: the left cheek was a hole through which Greer could see a row of baby teeth, one lost to the Tooth Fairy. Sam Hell widened his legs for a better shot, and Greer envisioned the rest of the girl’s teeth detonating in a shower of bone.

  Do something, she screamed to herself, but her mouth felt like Mama Shaw’s, packed with mud and cold leaves.

  Someone stronger acted first. The screen door crashed open, and the brood’s mother appeared, Señorita Magdalena: who spoke the sketchiest of English; whose contributions at Sunnybrook Club meetings were limited to two tiresome, pleading words: “The cheeldren”; whose parking slot was a muddy wreck thanks to the cavalcade of relatives who came by all day, dropping off bags of laundry that Magdalena cleaned at the park coin-op. Magdalena unfailingly brought over a pan of tres leches cake on Greer’s birthday and always called Greer mi corazón—my heart—though she’d done nothing to deserve it; who persevered like a motherfucker, raising five exceedingly polite kids despite the capricious rages of José Frito and the feeble sustenance of generic foods; whom, only in this instant, though the two had shared little more than cake and a few fumbled words, Greer discovered she loved with a fierceness that meant she would do anything to keep the woman alive.

  “Magdalena, get down!” she yelled.

  For a second, Greer feared the woman would start lurching like her children, but Magdalena, four feet six and ball-shaped, displayed a sudden lioness’s grace, leaping to the ground and landing in a ballplayer’s crouch. She ignored Greer’s warning. Of course she did; a lioness protects her cubs, Greer’s heart, mi corazón, slugged even harder.

  “Antonella!” Magdalena shouted. “Ignacio! Máximo! Constanza! Silvana!”

  Greer knew Their names just as Their names lost significance. Magdalena’s screams did appear to throw off Sam Hell. His gun arm wavered. Greer didn’t think he gave one shit about Señorita Magdalena; it was likely he wasn’t accustomed to shooting people in front of so many witnesses.

  He raised the gun in a two-handed grip.

  “My boy Billy went down last night,” Sam Hell said to Greer. “And then Billy got back up. Bit the shit out of the cops. And then those motherfuckers got back up! All these kids gotta go!”

  “Silvana!” Magdalena cried. Silvana was the little girl closest to Greer and Sam Hell, thirty feet away and closing. Magdalena ran after her. Because she was Magdalena’s heart, Greer felt the strain of her strides and shouted something—she wasn’t sure if it was words or just sound. It didn’t matter; Sam Hell shot.

  Greer flinched from the barrel’s white flash. She swore she could see individual raindrops halve and scatter. Silvana, all forty-five pounds of her, was kicked off her feet, landing two yards back with such an impact that dozens of dead leaves flew upward; in this new, upside-down world, Greer thought madly, this was simply the direction dead leaves fell.

  Magdalena howled and pulled the only child within reach—Ignacio, age ten—to the ground for safety. Greer, too, flattened herself, even though she was behind the shooter. The other children gave no indication of being bothered. They continued Their march.

  “Rodney, stop! Rodney, stop!”

  Greer looked left, toward the new voice, her neck muscles feeling like loose rubber. Just visible past the edge of Mama Shaw’s trailer, due north of Señorita Magdalena’s place, was the trailer Miss Jemisha shared with Sam Hell—real name Rodney, it seemed.

  Miss Jemisha stood on her steps in raincoat and boots, gripping the sides of her raincoat hood with both hands. Greer felt certain the only thing that had kept Miss Jemisha from ousting this low-rent gangster out of her life had been never actually seeing him pull a trigger.

  Now she had.

  “Back inside, woman!” Sam Hell cried, and though Greer hated this man, she hoped Jemisha, one last time, would do what he ordered.

  Instead, the woman ran straight at them. Miss Jemisha: whose oratorical tactic at Sunnybrook Club gatherings was to repeat one sentence, louder and louder until everyone else capitulated from exhaustion; whose regular, foulmouthed telephone tirades to debt collectors triggered everyone’s hatred by making them hate themselves; but whose joy, when it hit, caromed about the whole park in peals of infectious hee-haws; who checked in on Mama Shaw for months after her first leg amputation, and months after the second one, too, with no expectation of reward; who threw herself into any potentially violent conflict, just like she was now, because she had only one life to live—at least, those were the rules before today—and goddamn if she wasn’t going to live it, loudly, righteously, recklessly.

  Sam Hell gave Miss Jemisha a running back’s stiff-arm to the forehead, beneath which her raincoated arms flailed, too short to reach him. Except for Ignacio, who fought his mother’s embrace, the children had crossed the road, Silvana again in the lead. There was a neat black hole in her pajama top, from which blood trickled when it should have been gushing. The poor, destroyed rag doll of a girl kept walking, more teeth visible through the hole in her cheek, arms raised as if asking for a hug to make it all better.

  Miss Jemisha managed a boot to Sam Hell’s crotch. The gun swooped treacherously; Greer swore she could feel its sight across her body like someone had walked over her grave, as Daddy often said. The time to prevaricate, to use a Mr, Villard term, was over. Greer launched herself at Sam Hell’s legs. He toppled fast, his shoulder crunching to the ground, but kept kicking, his kneecaps socking like billiard balls against Greer’s face. With a cape-like flutter of raincoat, Jemisha slammed atop him, grappling for the gun.

  Sam Hell rolled halfway over, slamming both women into the climbing dome. But they were still two on one. Greer scaled Sam Hell’s legs and took hold of his gun arm. Her hands interlocked with Jemisha’s, practically the same shade of brown, twisting with effort. There was something heroic about it, Greer thought, and if she was about to die, it would be a fine final sight: Black women’s fists, fighting together.

  Jemisha made a startled, strangled noise as her skull was viciously yanked back, clanging against the bars. One of Mama Shaw’s bony hands clenched Jemisha’s box braids; she was pulling so hard Greer could see Jemisha’s scalp tighten beneath the cornrows. Jemisha let go of Sam Hell and hammered blindly behind her. Not one strike hit Mama Shaw; Jemisha’s knuckles cracked off the dome, leaving delicate lashes of blood.

  Sam Hell, one woman lighter, surged against Greer. A scream, the loudest yet, ripped the morning in half. Greer and Sam Hell turned in unison to see Señorita Magdalena pedaling her body through the mud away from Ignacio while kicking him in the face, Ignacio flopped after her with a seallike heave identical to that of the legless Mama Shaw. His face, always so smooth and alert, looked as if acid had eaten it back. He was all teeth, stained purple with blood
y mud.

  Magdalena’s cry mustered one more character: José Frito, clad in a wrongly buttoned flannel shirt, unzipped jeans, and unlaced sneakers, an ensemble that might have suggested total lack of foresight if not for the gun belt—an actual fucking buscadero-style, double-holstered, hand-tooled leather, cowboy-western gun belt. The Honduran burst out the door with a .45 pistol in each hand, ululating a war cry. His late arrival might have been due to injury: some white fabric, soaked red, was wrapped tight around his left forearm.

  José Frito opened fire with both guns, a firecracker chain of explosions.

  Greer huddled against the dome between the wailing Miss Jemisha and the cussing Sam Hell, afraid but relieved: here was help, and right now she’d take it in any shape it came. She expected Ignacio to go down, expected Silvana to blossom with exit wounds. But puffs of mud splattered at Greer’s feet. Yellow sparks flew from the dome bars, shaving sparks. José Frito was shooting at them.

  Even in the tumult, Greer understood. She’d never seen José give shit-all attention to Magdalena’s children. Only now, with the promise of invigorating gunfire, did he decide to play Father of the Year, taking aim not at the actual problem but at the Black guy with the gun. The two men should have been on the same team, but when there were guns on opposite sides of a road, they had to shoot at each other.

  Sam Hell rolled rightward, away from Greer, losing his Kangol hat. He planted his elbows in the mud and fired back. One of Magdalena’s windows shattered and one of her trash cans was gutshot, spurting rotten liquid. José Frito scrambled down the steps, returning fire in a way that looked cinematic but was wildly wayward. A bullet split one of the swing set’s dangling chains. Another shattered the railing of a trailer down the road. A third struck Silvana, luckless Silvana, in the back of the neck. Her throat exploded in blood so dark it looked like chocolate syrup as she was flung face-first to the ground.

  Two screams pealed louder than gunfire. One was Magdalena, insane with grief and confusion, who crawled around Ignacio and onto asphalt that tore blood from her knees. The second was right next to Greer: Jemisha, Mama Shaw, with dual handfuls of Jemisha’s braids now, had begun a scalping. Jemisha’s hair extensions were already shredded; Mama Shaw chewed the puffs like cud. The skin at Jemisha’s hairline had begun to rip as neatly as if along a perforated line, revealing red-orange subcutaneous fat.

  Jemisha quit her ineffectual backward punches, grabbed a dome rung with one hand, and reached the other toward Greer.

  “Help,” gasped this woman who had never, ever asked for help.

  Greer wanted only to sprint up the road and take Mr. Villard’s advice, but Jemisha’s hand was so close, shaking so badly. Greer could hear the cloth-like tearing of her forehead and see runners of blood painting vertical lines down her face, past her bulging, terrified eyes. Greer pounced, latching on to Jemisha’s hand with an arm wrestler’s grip. She wrapped her other hand around Jemisha’s wrist and braced her foot, still clad in a flip-flop, against a bar. She pulled. Jemisha pulled. But Mama Shaw was eating her way up Jemisha’s head, the braids disappearing down the old woman’s throat like feeding tubes.

  Despite the gunfire still cracking around her, Greer slid feetfirst into the dome and began stomping Mama Shaw in the face. The woman’s nose, ruptured from Sam Hell’s boot, tore off with a plop of cartilage, leaving behind an empty, scrotal bag of skin. Greer kept going, her flip-flops flying free, her bare heels pistoning until Mama Shaw’s face felt pulpy. She didn’t stop until Miss Jemisha was crouched beside her, finally free.

  Jemisha seemed to not hear the splattering of bullets into mud. She ran her hands through the leaves, found the sort of heavy, jagged rock that had no business at a playground, and hobbled so her knees pinned down both of Mama Shaw’s arms. The old woman, her face an unrecognizable red paste, still gnashed her mouth-shaped hole around a wad of hair. Jemisha raised the rock in both hands and drove it down.

  Greer pivoted her knees in the mud, lumbered to her feet, and ran. But she heard the thick impacts into Mama Shaw’s skull and brain, as well as Miss Jemisha’s rapid, riverside babble.

  “Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love.” Scrunch. “Because of your great mercy, wipe away my sins.” Scrunch. “Wash away my evil and make me clean from my sin.” Scrunch. “I recognize my faults, I am conscious of my sins.” Scrunch. “I have sinned against you—only against you.” Scrunch.

  Could Greer feel bullets flutter past her skin? Or was it only the rain? She leaped past Sam Hell, her naked foot stamping his Kangol hat into the mud, heading for her trailer. Two arms whipped into her face, fingertips scrabbling. It was Silvana, still rudely alive and only inches away, the rent in her cheek revealing a long, waggling tongue, the hole through her neck so massive that what was left began to collapse beneath her head’s weight.

  Greer batted Silvana’s arms away and kept running. Between her and her trailer was nothing but silver, slanting rain. Then her foot caught the fulcrum of the fucking seesaw. Hurled into a somersault, she hit the ground on her right ear and went briefly deaf.

  The lusterless faces of several children banked her way, and in the next instant, they began to move toward her. Greer cursed and pushed herself to a sitting position, just as Silvana, or what remained of her, tripped on the same fucking fulcrum and landed directly atop Greer.

  The girl showed no surprise or disorientation from her fall. She hinged open her jaws and flung her head down at Greer; Greer stopped her with a forearm to her hollowed neck. Silvana’s tongue, now dangling from the hole in her cheek, licked dryly across Greer’s mud-slathered chin. One hand sank into Greer’s hair.

  Jemisha’s peeled scalp flashed before Greer’s eyes, and she thrashed as if she were on fire. But Silvana was dug in like a tick, jaws snapping. The little girl didn’t blink, and somehow this was the most horrifying detail. She did not blink. Silvana’s cold upper lip grazed Greer’s nose. The pale, shambling blotches of the other four children appeared at the periphery of Greer’s vision. She was going to die. It was not the first time in Greer’s life she’d thought it, but it was with the most regret. She was fighting as hard as she could, and it wasn’t enough.

  An old-fashioned baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger stained cherry red, hit Silvana at home-run velocity. The thickest section of wood struck the girl’s neck, ripping through what was left of the bullet-torn muscle. Silvana was thrown to the ground, neck so destroyed that her head dangled by its spinal cord alone. And still her jaw gnashed, up and down on her tongue.

  Greer poured herself into a man’s arms. They were empty: he’d dropped the bat as if contact with the girl had sent rabies cankering up the handle. Here was the final member of the Sunnybrook Club, Drasko Zorić, whose chilly remarks often froze the squabbling of Mr. Villard, Mama Shaw, and Miss Jemisha; who not only trapped nocturnal nuisances like raccoons and possums but purportedly slit their throats to watch them die; whose yard was an eyesore of auto, washing machine, mower, and toilet parts; but who also proudly offered assistance to anyone who needed help reading a bill, ticket, or tax form; who each January 14 celebrated Serbian New Year by doing good deeds, this year helping Freddy Morgan gut his decayed bathroom wall.

  “Can you stand?” He scanned the playground, then stared sharply at Greer. “Yes, you stand. Now, now, now, now, now.”

  Drasko hoisted the young woman to her feet. He wore a shiny blue tracksuit; she traced her muddy, bloody fingers across the clean, satiny polyester. He gripped her by the soggy shoulders and forcibly rotated her so she’d see the children only a few feet away, hands grasping like babies after bright plastic playthings: Antonella, Máximo, and Constanza, unless They’d become altogether different beasts.

  Drasko dragged Greer away from her trailer and onto the asphalt. The children’s groans made her ears pop, and abruptly she heard everything: gunshots, cries of anger, yodels of pain, Drasko Zorić had braved a playground swarming with bullets to save her—and he wasn’t done yet. Señorit
a Magdalena was on her back in the road, kicking at Ignacio, who’d managed to catch one of her slippered feet and was trying to bite it.

  Greer felt as if a sunbeam had speared through storm clouds. The crabby, ragtag congress of complainers of the Sunnybrook Club, which Greer had mocked right down to accent imitations and stereotyped nicknames, had never been the losers she’d considered them. Even if they’d lived dead-end lives in dead-end jobs, today they’d proven themselves unwilling to quit fighting. Mr, Villard aside, the Sunnybrook Club were heroes.

  A truck swerved around Magdalena and her son before speeding past Greer, close enough that she could see the determined grimace on the face of the driver. She plunged through its wake of heat, keeping pace with Drasko while noting two more cars squealing their way. The whole Last Resort had awakened and wanted out. A fine idea, but Magdalena and Ignacio were in the middle of the road, and Greer doubted all escaping vehicles would manage the truck’s swift dodge.

  Greer grabbed Magdalena’s right arm, Drasko took her left. Both pulled Magdalena backward. She cried out as the asphalt shredded her housecoat. Those wounds would heal. What was important was that they’d stolen her foot back; Ignacio stared into his emptied hands with idiotic loss.

  Magdalena reached up, gripping Drasko’s and Greer’s arms.

  “Dios te bendiga,” she said to Drasko. To Greer, her old endearment, “Mi corazón, mi corazón.”

  A bumperless sedan roared by, its side mirror clipping Drasko’s elbow. The car’s muffler skittered along the road, spraying sparks into an oily cloud of exhaust. Greer and Drasko brought Magdalena to her feet just as Ignacio shot forward out of the smoke, The boy folded facedown to the asphalt, splattering blood. The rear of his skull was cracked, and unlike Silvana, he didn’t move again. Magdalena screamed, and despite every affront her child had recently committed, she ran to him, arms out to gather his body.