Pariah

It wasn’t like he didn’t envy the dumb bastards who had faith. They were the lucky ones. They just assumed, even in light of the nonstop reality show outside, that when you died your soul departed for a better place. Those ambling piles of rot out there were just empty husks.

In the kitchen, Ruth foraged in the cupboard. They still had a few tiny provisions, most provided by the generosity of their neighbors, but those would soon be depleted. There was a box of melba toast, some peanut butter, a can of lima beans, a can of SpaghettiOs and an individual stick of Slim Jim beef whatever-it-is. There were also three plastic gallon jugs of water. The pipes were as arid as she was, so they no longer bothered to test the faucet. All it did was groan, and if she wanted to hear that noise she’d stay in the living room and listen to Abe.

Unlike her husband, Ruth’s faith had come back to her, and that was before things had turned to shit. Around the time of her mother’s death, Ruth had renewed her bond to Judaism, which had caused much consternation in her husband, who thought she was cured of that foolishness.

When Ruth turned sixty-six, her mother, Ida, ninety-two and more vegetable than animal, finally gave up the ghost. At the time of her death, Ida’s age and weight were the same; she was bedridden, had virtually no brain function and, if this was possible, looked worse than Ruth looked currently. Prior to her actual demise, bits of Ida had predeceased her in the form of amputated limbs gone sour from gangrene due to poor circulation.

At the time it had put Abe in the mind of an old World War II joke about a captive American in a German POW camp who is on work duty fixing the roof in the rain. He slips while mending a hole and catches his leg on a rusty nail. He ends up losing the leg and requests that the guard send it back to the States to be buried. The guard is sympathetic and honors the request. The same POW is back on work detail and fixing another roof hole when the same thing happens. He loses the other leg and makes the same request, which is also honored. The POW, now legless, is on work detail in the lumber mill. He is feeding planks through a table saw and loses an arm. He makes the same request to have the limb sent back to the States for burial. This time the guard denies the appeal. “But why?” the POW asks. “Because,” the guard says, “the commandant thinks you are attempting to escape, piece by piece.”

That joke lost its appeal as old lady Ida escaped piece by piece from the Golden Acres Assisted Living Facility of Maspeth four times-plus she’d gone blind from diabetes, was incontinent, lost the power of speech, didn’t know who the hell she was, where she was, if she was. And as one terrible thing after another befell Ida, Ruth began going to the local temple to make her peace with God. By the time Ida mercifully kicked the bucket-no mean feat considering she had no feet-Ruth was very active in the temple and Abe was very alienated from his wife. They lived together, but apart. It would have bothered him more if he was still sexually attracted to her, but that part of their relationship had “escaped” long ago. He’d watched Ida’s nightmarish living putrefaction and thought to himself many times, There is no God. Ida had never been his favorite person, but no one should have to go through what she did before snuffing it. He wouldn’t wish that on Hitler.

Well, maybe Hitler.

And Stalin.

But that’s about it.

From outside, a guttural yawp burst the bubble of silence and Abe heaved himself to the window in time to watch the spectacle blossom below. This was new: one of the pus bags had sunk his teeth into another, much to his victim’s consternation. As the aggressor tore out a chunk of the other’s rotting flesh, both uttered unutterably foul noises, setting off a wave of restlessness through the normally torpid crowd. The antagonist choked down the chunk of fetid flesh, quaked a little, then vomited it back up. A spastic skirmish ensued.

“You gotta see this!” Abe shouted. “Hey, honey…,” old habits die hard, “… these sons of bitches have finally started in on each other!” Abe clapped his hands in delight. “They’re evolving! Soon the miserable bastards will be at each other’s throats, just like regular people!” Abe began laughing and coughing simultaneously.

“What’s so great about that?” Ruth said.

Abe caught his breath, sighed, and squinted at Ruth. “You really know how to suck the joy out of the moment.”

“How is that joyful? What is joyful about those things attacking each other? It’s horrible. They’re horrible.”

“Irony is lost on you, Ruth. You never could handle it. It’s funny to me, see, because in spite of all the terrible things you could say about those sacks of waste out there, they always seem to get along, even if it’s completely mindless. But now they’re pushing and shoving. Even dead and reanimated we’re hardwired for odium. Even those brain-dead heaps of flesh eventually manifest hostility toward each other. It’s the human way to be inhuman.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Just go away, Ruth. Let me enjoy this. Forget I said anything. Please.”

Abe poked his head back out the window.

Things were back to normal. No pushing. No shoving. No turbulence. Just the usual vegetable parade. He mashed his head into the upholstery and, eyes shut, pondered the quiet. Once upon a time he’d have cherished such silence but not now. He missed the sound of traffic. The buses that used to run along York, even their whining hydraulics.

Sitting there, eyes closed, a faint sound wafting past the discolored chintz oozed into Abe’s ears; one in addition to the brainless lowing of the shamblers. One that he couldn’t place, dull and echoey. With effort Abe disengaged from the chair and craned his head out, looking north-nada-then south- bingo! Something was plowing uptown through the crowd, weaving past abandoned vehicles left at jagged angles. As it approached the sound amplified. Thumping. “The hell?” Abe said to himself. It was moving at a decent clip. A car. No, taller. One of those mini-SUVs, only he couldn’t hear the roar of an engine over the wet thud of rickety bodies jouncing off its hard surfaces. Maybe a hybrid; they ran silent.

Abe wanted to shout to its pilot but there was no point; that machine wasn’t stopping for anything. But unless those things had learned how to drive, at least there was evidence of life beyond this sapped bunch. As it neared the building Abe got a good, albeit fleeting, look at the vehicle. The front end was a dark mass of blood-drenched concavities. Though he was pretty certain those things didn’t feel panic, it was clear they weren’t thrilled with becoming temporary hood ornaments as they were bounced up off the pavement, or ground up below.

As the small sport ute plowed northwards it hit the shell of a dead car masked by the crowd. The savage impact echoed through the canyon of buildings and again Abe witnessed a driver explode through his windshield. “Poor bastard,” Abe sighed, anticipating the crowd swarming on the mangled driver, ripping him to shreds as the entree du jour. But they didn’t. An aperture opened in the crowd before the now-smoking wreck of his ride.

“What the hell?” Abe said, confounded.

The zombies were spreading out, away from the area where the driver’s body lay. Abe couldn’t see him, he was out of range and masked by the multitude, but there was no doubt they weren’t all swarming him. A bestial moaning came from that direction, making the hairs on Abe’s neck rise. “That’s new,” he gasped.

With reluctance, he tore himself away from the window as Ruth entered the room.

“What was that?” she cried.

“A crash,” he said. “A car. It crashed. I gotta see if anyone else is seeing this.”

As he left the apartment Ruth shuffled over to where he’d been for her own look. In the hall there was a commotion of voices. Abe heard Karl shout something about the roof and in spite of his protesting legs, he hied upstairs. As he neared the top few steps an explosion rocked the building and he gripped the handrail to avoid tumbling back down.

“My heart,” he sputtered.

When he stepped onto the tar paper he saw black smoke churning up from below. Energy spent, he shuffle- jogged the rest of the way, joining some of the other men at the edge of the roof.

“I didn’t think hybrids blew like that,” he panted.

“The car he hit did,” Karl clarified. “Anyway, why do you think it was a hybrid?”

“I didn’t hear the engine.”

“Engine was makin’ plenty of noise,” Dabney said. “You’re just a bit deaf, old-timer.”

Abe was about to protest, but Alan shouted, “Are you guys nuts? Who cares what kind of car that was? A