Pariah (26 page)

“Of course you’re allowed,” Ellen said, attempting to keep her voice neutral. “It’s just you were such a dynamo before you got
that DVD thingy. I’m not saying you’re not entitled to a little downtime, but . . .” Alan raised an eyebrow. “Never mind. Watch your shows. Enjoy.”

“
Thank you.
”

Ellen watched Alan slip on the headphones, the gesture eerily evocative of Mona and her ever-present earbuds. As he lapsed into a state of televisual bliss, Ellen felt a virulent wave of disconsolation. Alan’s posture seemed to mimic Mike’s, the way he slouched on the sofa, legs up on the ottoman, ankles crossed. The way his toes flexed when he laughed. Alan’s face relaxed as the vintage comedy soothed him, but Ellen’s expression began to collapse. This couldn’t be over an argument about their preferences in comedy. The wave of disconsolation turned into a wave of nausea. She got up from the dining table and bolted into the bedroom, reaching the window just as the rise in her gorge crested. A torrent of partially digested food spewed out, dousing the zombies below, none of whom seemed to mind.

How long had it been since she’d vomited? It almost seemed decadent. But maybe some of the food was tainted—lack of refrigeration and all. Ellen gagged up a few more blasts, then slumped down and let her head drop between her knees. For a few long unhappy months in high school Ellen had had a flirtation with bulimia. Alan reliving happier times in the living room; Ellen reliving unhappier times in the bedroom. Her puke splattered all over where Mike had been slaughtered, consumed, possibly digested by those filthy, hateful, unnatural things.

Mike.

Her husband.

Former.

Father of her child.

Former.

Former husband. Former child.

Former everything.

Her sobs drowned out by Alan’s headphones, Ellen’s body drew in on itself, convulsed in sorrow.

Eddie wiped spooge off his hand with a paper napkin, his right bicep burning from exertion. Ever since he’d liberated his cache of DVDs from his old boudoir he’d been Stroker Ace squared. Dave sat on the couch and thumbed through an old issue of
Time
, the cover story of which was rampant obesity in America. Ah, for the good old days. Dave wasn’t really reading, though. He feigned indifference to Eddie’s incessant onanism but inside he was seething. And hurting. How Eddie could prefer servicing himself over having actual sex with an actual human being was beyond Dave. It was like what they’d developed together was an accident, a phase. Dave kept offering to facilitate Eddie’s pleasure, even if it meant Eddie’s eyes being glued to the seven-inch monitor. But Eddie wasn’t having it. Now that he’d scored his porn, Dave was out of the loop.

“How many times can you watch the same scene?” Dave asked.

“You know what you sound like? You sound like a fuckin’ woman,” Eddie scowled. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Just you.”

“So maybe you should let it penetrate that thick skull of yours.”

Dave chose not to take the opportunity to return an obvious smutty riposte. Instead he slid off the futon and left the apartment, garnering nary a peep of protest from Mr. Tommasi. Fine. Let him indulge in his pathetic backslide. Then he’d come crawling back to Dave and maybe, just maybe Dave would have him back. Who was he kidding? Of course he’d allow him back in.

Out in the hall Dave pressed his face against the cool stucco and sighed. When had his life devolved into a same-sex soap opera?
Were all the girls he’d banged throughout high school and college just a smoke screen? His attraction to them had felt real at the time, but then again, he never bonded emotionally with any of them. Real bonds had only been forged with male companions, especially Eddie. He let out a deep breath and walked up the flight of stairs to the roof. Dabney would be up there. Could he fake conviviality? It didn’t matter. Dabney wasn’t the type to natter on unless you expressly sought that kind of interaction. Let him sit with his pile of bricks and play “stone the zombie.” Dave took another deep breath and pushed open the door.

Though the sun was lost in a gauzy white haze, the light was intense to Dave, especially after having been indoors. He shielded his eyes and fished his Giants baseball cap out of his back pocket. Instead of lying belly down on his tarp, Dabney was seated at an aluminum folding card table doing something Dave couldn’t quite discern. A conversational opener presented itself—something to distract from his current romantic woe—so Dave, attempting to affect insouciance, strolled over and took it.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked as he approached. Dabney was hunched over and wearing thick magnifying glasses, something Dave had never witnessed before on the older man. He neared the table and saw many small parts, some loose, some still connected to plastic sprues. Dabney was building a model kit.
How adorable.
Wait a minute. Did Dave really think that? Was he being ironic or facetious or patronizing? No, it
was
adorable, this middle-aged man using a pair of eyebrow tweezers to delicately assemble parts from this, what was it, model airplane, maybe?

“Makin’ a North American P-51D Mustang. Good way to pass time, plus the glue gets you a little high.” Dabney looked up and smiled. “Just kidding. Takes more than a little glue for me. Speaking of which, you want a beer? You look like you could use one.”

“Uh, sure. Thanks.” Dave hadn’t even thought to ask Mona for suds. Stupid. Dabney handed him a bottle of Heineken and Dave held back the urge to weep with gratitude.

“All these little parts and pieces. Been a while since I put one of these together. My boys used to be wild for these things. They liked doing the hot rods and whatnot, but I prefer planes.” Dabney looked up at the sky, scanning for nothing. “I used to complain about the roar of jet planes, ’specially during TV shows. Used to have to turn the volume up to compete with them. Now I’d give my left nut for a plane to go zipping by up there. Even if it wasn’t meant for me, least it would be a sign of something going on out there. Some sign that maybe there were others. Before Mona showed, last sign we had of life was that crash, and that was snuffed out before it even made an impression. I asked Mona if she’s encountered any others on her errands and she said no. There’s gotta be others. Just maybe not around here.”

“How does she do it, is what I wonder.”

“Yeah, well that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, ain’t it? How come those godless motherfuckers don’t eat her up like the rest of us mere mortals? Yeah.” Dabney finished off his beer, then tossed it over the edge of the roof, not even watching its trajectory. Out of sight it crashed, hopefully against the skull of one of the undead. Dabney snapped a tiny piece off the sprue and filed it smooth with a small wedge of sandpaper, his eyes on the instructions held in place by a small monophonic cassette player that warbled a well-worn tape of Ben Webster. “I’d like to see several squadrons of these strafing the bejeezus out of those assholes down there,” he said, holding the box art up for Dave to admire. “Imagine that? A bunch of these babies blasting the holy living hell out of those cannibal bastards? That’d be sweet.”

Dave nodded, sipping his beer. It was warm, so Dave pretended he was in Europe. He’d read somewhere that Europeans drank
their beer warm. Sounded weird, if given the choice, but he’d never know firsthand. Dave looked out at the horizon to the north and wished he’d traveled, seen the world, broadened his vistas. Too late now. He then looked south and gasped.

“Look over there,” he said, pointing.

In the distance a thick, black cloud churned skyward from below, its origin blocked by buildings. But somewhere, looked like maybe in the east forties, a fire blazed. Was that a sign of life elsewhere? Or maybe a gas line blew all by itself.

“Hold on a sec,” Dabney said, reaching over to switch the dial on his radio-cassette player. He then stopped, midgesture, and let out a derisive snort. “Idiot. I was going to say, let’s turn on the news. Pavlovian response, I suppose. You’d think after several months of this shit I’d know not to try. Then again, I got some sweet notes serenading. I’m building a model kit. I’m drinking a beer. It feels almost normal, ’cept for me living up on a roof. But even that feels kind of normal. It is normal, now. Amazing how the definition of what passes for normal is always changing. If normal means what’s most common, those zombies are normal and we’re not.”

Dave nodded, taking another swig of Heineken. Normal didn’t used to entail a physical relationship with Eddie—or at least not a sexual one. It had always been pretty physical. The only time in their past that had been sexual was when they’d fucked a couple of coeds in their dorm room. Dave shook his head, trying to dislodge the memory. He didn’t want to think about Eddie now.

Both men’s attention drifted southwards again as a loud thud, dulled by distance, was heard, followed by a ball of fire which shot into the sky, only to be absorbed by the black smoke. A succession of muffled explosions followed, each punctuated by thick clouds of melanoid brume. Easterly winds bent the plumes of smoke into choky question marks in the sky.

“What do you suppose it is?” Dave asked.

“I dunno. Looks to be pretty far east. Could be the old Con Ed steam plant, near the UN. Or did they tear that down? I can’t remember now. Could be a lot of things, though. And unless we send our girl Friday down there to check it out, we’ll never know. And frankly I don’t think that would be a very good use of her time.”

“No, I suppose not. Jesus, you think it will get up to us?”

“Don’t be simpleminded, son. I wouldn’t want to be in that vicinity, but we got us a few miles between here and there. Don’t sweat it. And think on the bright side, maybe it’s frying up a mess of zombies. Wouldn’t that be something?” Dabney held up the half-finished Mustang and mimed a few swoops, adding appropriate
rat-a-tat-tat
sound effects. “Not quite as cathartic as a good strafing, but it’ll have to do.”

Whatever was going on downtown it was dramatic. Volleys of muted concussions recurred with some regularity and a significant portion of the southern sky was smudged, the undersides of the dark clouds tinged orange from the blaze that raged out of sight below. The cloud of smoke and soot blew north and soon the sky directly above began to sicken. The charcoal gray began to leech pigment away, the already anemic sky turning greenish gray. The air smelled bad, a combination of charred solid matter and burning petrol.

“Something always gotta come along and rain on your parade,” Dabney muttered. He eyeballed the symmetrical rows of the new Brita Ultramax water purifiers arranged by the low dividing wall. If it did begin to rain, as it now threatened to, even those filters might not be sufficient to fully cleanse the tainted water. A heavy drop fell on his nose and he frowned, adding, “literally,” as he restored the remaining parts of his model kit to the box. As more drops began to pelt the roof Dave bid him a quick adieu, and then fled into the stairwell. After a few moments Dabney took off his clothes and stowed them in his lean-to.

The water was cool and good enough for an impromptu shower. He stood in the center of the roof, head tilted back, letting the rain pummel his face, saturating his salt-and-pepper beard. He squeezed his facial hair, wringing out the excess wetness, letting the overflow cascade down his chest. Unlike the previous downpour, which had been so mirthful, such a communal affair, this time he stood alone. Maybe Dave had warned the others about the black cloud. Fine. Dabney didn’t mind a solitary soaking. Let them be afraid. Rain was nature’s way of purging poison from the clouds, putting out the fires below. Who was Dabney to question that? The rain seemed all right. It didn’t burn or even prickle his skin in any way that raised a red flag. He opened his eyes as a very unscientific litmus test. No, the water didn’t sting.
Good enough for my eyes
, he reasoned,
good enough to drink
. He removed the lids of the Brita dispensers.

What the hell
, he figured.
Put those filters to the test
.

Karl had forgotten how reader unfriendly the Bible was, no matter which version—although he vaguely remembered the
Good News Bible
being dumbed down quite a bit. Awkward and often impenetrable phrasing. Contradictory accounts of the same events. Clearly it was the message and not the messenger. No wonder his mind had often wandered during church and Manfred’s sermonizing. The language was nearly impermeable. After browsing through the earlier sections, he skipped to Revelation, figuring this most germane.

Karl had forgotten—or maybe blocked—the particulars, but the imagery came flooding back: God and His four demon monsters covered with eyes sitting by His throne, the monsters incessantly repeating, “
Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” The first creature like a lion, the second like a calf, the third had a face like a man, and the fourth was like an eagle—four
creatures, each of them with six wings and loads of watchful eyes. Surrounding God’s throne were twenty-four other thrones, occupied by twenty-four elders dressed in white garments, with crowns of gold on their heads. God’s throne emitted constant lightning and thunder. Like the ultimate booming system.

It sounded more like a rave than Heaven.

And God, evidently, had the appearance of jasper and sardius, a forgotten detail that sent Karl scurrying to his dictionary, which explained that jasper was, “an opaque form of quartz; red or yellow or brown or dark green in color; used for ornamentation or as a gemstone,” and that sardius was, “a deep orange-red variety of chalcedony,” which he also needed to look up, only to discover that chalcedony was, “a translucent to transparent milky or grayish quartz with distinctive microscopic crystals arranged in slender fibers in parallel bands,” which frankly didn’t help at all. It wasn’t very comforting to picture the Almighty made of stone, perched on His throne, with catchphrase-spewing monster lapdogs for company. How Jim Henson hadn’t adapted this was a mystery; it would have made a perfect vehicle for the Muppets.