Pariah

“No,” Dave said, opting for honesty.

“You’ll be all right.” Eddie smiled. “You’re with me.”

“Awright,” the bartender said. He undid the lock and pushed open the door a hair. “Get out, quick.” As an afterthought he added, “An’ good luck.” Then he pulled the door shut and locked it behind them. Eddie and Dave lived across the avenue and halfway up the block, but that short distance looked like an uphill battle, even though it was downhill. Dave looked south and saw black smoke rising from various unseen fires. The body that had hit the window lay dead a few feet away, its head collapsed from the double impact. A military troop transport rumbled up York Avenue with little regard for the foot traffic that surged around it in blind panic.

“See?” Eddie beamed, “Here comes the fuckin’ cavalry!”

The vehicle roared by and Dave and Eddie saw bloodied bodies affixed to the sides, scratching at the armored plating. The bodies looked broken but agitated. A man clung to the side, his head facing away from the truck, twisted one hundred and eighty degrees the wrong way. Drool and blood hung in long swaying loops from his shattered jaw. As the truck passed, Dave and Eddie gaped as they saw the troops inside being attacked and consumed by similar assailants. With another, “Fuck this shit,” Eddie took off in the wake of the truck, which momentarily cleared a path. Dave followed, slipping once or twice on fresh blood that leaked from the vehicle. They were more like Custer’s cavalry, with York Avenue as Little Bighorn and the infected as the Sioux and Cheyenne.

As Eddie fished for his keys at the front door to their building a freshly reanimated little girl, no more than five or six, sprang up and attempted to bite his forearm through his thick leather coat. Eddie knew this kid. Not by name, but he’d seen her and her mom in Carl Schurz Park. Her mom was a bona fide MILF and he’d always slowed his jog to get an eyeful of her cleavage. The kid had been cute, too, though more than once he’d seen her pitching a fit for ice cream or cookies. Now the kid’s blood-streaked face was contorted into a parody of childish greed, and human meat was all she craved. One eye bulged from its socket, the white showing all the way around the iris.

Without a moment’s hesitation Eddie punched her square in the face, shattering the small skull within. She dropped to the pavement, disoriented but not motionless. Twitching, she rocked herself side to side, like an upside-down turtle.

“Fuckin’ cuntlet!” Eddie bellowed, examining the bite marks. Assured he was uninjured, he raised his foot and stomped on her head, splattering bone and brain onto the sidewalk. Dave froze a few feet shy of the episode, raising his hands to his mouth. Eddie unlocked the vestibule door and with great impatience shouted, “You in or out, Dave?”

Dave sidestepped the stain that used to be a little girl and, once safely inside the entrance hall, puked. He then looked helplessly at Eddie, who was examining his bare forearm. A little discoloration from the bite was evident, but that was all.

“If that little cunt didn’t still have her milk teeth I might be in trouble,” Eddie said, brow creased as he mulled this over. “Seriously. That was close.”

“Yeah,” Dave said, wiping his mouth.

Their neighbor, Gerri, stood at the top of the steps, looking bedazzled. As they stepped past her onto the second floor landing she pointed at the vomit.

“You can’t leave that there. It’s unsanitary.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie grumbled.

Gerri’s Yorkie, Cuppy, skittered down the stairs and began lapping up Dave’s sick.

“Sorry,” Dave murmured. “I’ll get it later.”

7

July, Now

“Do something, you piles of pus.”

Even before things got as bad as they’d gotten, Abe Fogelhut knew the drill. He was eighty-three years old, the TV and radio were shot, he’d never been much of a reader-except for the occasional paper, and even there it was strictly the Post or the News, never the hoity-toity bleeding-heart Times-so he did what old people do: he sat by the window and watched the world putrefy, counting off the minutes until the final letdown. If he had any balls he’d have hurried the process up. Why forestall the inevitable?

Because as lousy as this life was, this was all you got.

The final reward was finality, period. Except these days it wasn’t, so death had lost some of its appeal.

So Abe did what he did. Today, much like the day before, and the day before, and the day before that. He’d arranged his frail, emaciated body into a semblance of comfort in the threadbare upholstered chair, parted the dingy chintz curtains, opened the dusty venetian blinds and took his position as eyewitness to nothing. The throng milled about-same old, same old. Nothing ever changed. Even the ache in Abe’s empty belly had quieted to a dull numbness. He’d actually welcome the sharpness of the hunger pangs, but you can get used to anything. And that was the problem. He was used to the way things were.

With some effort, Abe opened the window, leaned his head out a little, worked up some glutinous saliva and spat into the mindless crowd directly beneath his fifth-floor dwelling. The thick, pasty blob plopped onto one thing’s noggin and the schmuck didn’t even have the decency to notice, to become outraged or even annoyed. They never reacted. Abe sighed with resignation and eased back from the window, repositioning himself in his seat. “This is what it comes down to,” he muttered. “This is what passes for entertainment in this hollow semblance of a world. Feh.” He mashed his head back into the cushion and clamped his eyes shut, grinding his already nubbin teeth, taking shallow breaths. “What’s the point?” he moaned. “What’s the goddamn point?”

“What’s the point of what?”

“Exactly.”

Ruth shuffled into the room, her slippers shushing against the worn carpeting. He kept his eyes shut. She was unbearable to look at. The skin under her sharp jaw was a loose curtain, whatever nasty business lurked beneath barely hidden by her translucent epidermis. Abe could avoid looking at himself. He didn’t bother with mirrors any more, not since he stopped shaving. His whiskers had itched at first, but they concealed the sins of his lank flesh so they earned their keep. Plus, why waste water these days? For the sake of vanity? Vanity was outmoded folly, even in light of the facial hair. Abe smelled like the old parchment he resembled, his skin felt like membranous cheap leather. He’d stopped changing clothes on a daily basis weeks ago. Why bother? He’d stopped bathing before that, except to wipe a damp sponge in a desultory manner under his pits and over his balls and ass.

But to see Ruth in the same situation was intolerable. She’d always taken such pride in her appearance. She had been vain, back when vanity wasn’t such a futile pursuit. Now she looked like a wizened mummy sheathed loosely in drab Kmart dressing. If Abe had anything in his belly to vomit up upon seeing her, he would, as a eulogy to her former beauty.

“What’s the point of what?” Ruth repeated.

“Of anything. Of everything. Of answering that question.”

“Then what’s the point of asking it every day?”

“Exactly. Exactly so.”

“I hate talking to you when your eyes are closed,” Ruth complained.

“I hate talking to you when my eyes are open.”

Weeks ago that rejoinder might have brought tears to Ruth’s eyes, but she knew what Abe meant, and if she had any more tears to cry she still might shed a few, but she was dry as the Sahara. Abe listened to Ruth hobble back out of the living room and gradually opened his eyes again to stare out the window. Though Jewish in name, he’d always been an atheist, and nothing he’d ever seen or experienced dissuaded him from that. This was it. This was all you got. So, he’d live as long as possible, and when the time came that he keeled over in his chair from starvation and dehydration, at least he’d be able to say to himself that he’d ridden it out.

Whatever that’s worth.