Pariah

With the pretext of needing some things from his pad, Alan disengaged from Ellen and fled her constricting lair. With nimble assurances he edged out into the common hall and left her standing in her kitchen. At the cessation of the multiple clicks of her dead bolts engaging, the door across the hall swung open and there stood Eddie, looking wry and malevolent with a fishing rod in his hand.

“You don’t waste any time, do you?” he leered. “Y’know, I always figured you for queer, but I doff my lid to you, Zotz. You got right in there like a champ and got the booty. Hats off, bud.”

“What are you…?”

“Don’t play dumb, champ.” Waggling the fishing rod to make his point, Eddie held up Alan’s smoothed-out crumpled drawing of Ellen. “I did a little fishing in Lake Swenson.” He turned the drawing over, its back flecked with bloodstains.

Alan stared at his handiwork in disbelief. “With everything going on outside you rescued that drawing from the alley? Are you fucking insane?”

“Car crashes are a dime a dozen,” Eddie said, grinning, “but art is forever.”

“Car crashes are a dime a-” Alan shook his head like a wet dog trying to make sense of that statement. “What? Name the last time you saw a car driving by.”

“Been ages. But it didn’t do us any good, did it? Anyway, other sounds were of more interest. Ellen never moaned like that with Mikey boy, I can tell you. Even back in the day.”

Alan shoved Eddie into his apartment and closed the door behind them.

“Jesus Christ, Eddie. She might hear you,” Alan said, jabbing his finger into Eddie’s ditchlike sternum.

“Everyone hears everyone, Casanova. Sound travels. Especially when you’re bangin’ a screamer. She was making so much noise I thought she was gettin’ eaten alive. I guess maybe she was, actually.” Eddie smirked. With a plastic magnetic banana he affixed the drawing to his refrigerator door, admiring it. “Not like the old days, though, huh? Back in the day Ellen had some boasty titties. Well, you make do with what you’ve got, right? Don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good enough.”

“Look, don’t make a big thing of this, okay?” Alan said, hating the vaguely inveigling tone in his voice. “Ellen has enough on her plate…”

“None of us have enough on our plates,” Eddie interrupted.

“I meant figuratively. Jesus. Anyway, this is just a temporary thing. I’m just trying to…”

“Get your dick wet. I understand. Dude, if there’s anyone in the building who’s on your wavelength it’s yours truly. That sensitive artist shit worked its hoodoo. I get it. Some chicks dig jocks, some dig nerds. I should’ve known Ellen was a nerd whore. Just look no further than the late Mikey Swenson. What was his racket? Computers?”

Mike had worked in the IT department at an investment brokerage down on Wall Street, so point to the observant jock.

“Look, just keep it on the DL, all right? Let the woman grieve in peace.”

Eddie sniggered. “Okay. On one condition.”

Alan sagged. “Name it.”

“Keep the nudie art comin’. I want you to keep me supplied with fresh whacking material. I don’t know why I didn’t think to tap you sooner, what with all other resources being nonexistent. Not like I can log onto Bang Bus any more.”

“You want me to do porno art of Ellen for you?” Alan gaped.

“Not just Ellen. And not the way she looks now. I’ll come up with some scenarios for you to do up for me. Okay? Okay. Now get the fuck outta my apartment.”

Alan traipsed downstairs and fell onto his bed in a daze. This was what prison must be like. Alan had always wondered if he could endure incarceration-especially long term. He figured his only survival skill would be doing pervy fantasy art for the other inmates. The rapists would want rape fantasies. The murderers would want murder fantasies. The hyphenates would want hybridized fantasies, one from column A, three from column B, and so on. And now a blackmailing ex-jock was leaning on Alan for post-apocalyptic pinups.

What would Vargas do?

9

April, Then

“She’s turning blue, Mike. She’s turning fucking blue! You have to do something!”

“What am I supposed to do, Ellie? What? Go to the Duane Reade? Call a doctor?”

Ellen held Emily, barely a year old, and watched her tiny mouth open and close like a fish out of water. She’d wrung every drop of nutrition from her mother and the coffers were nearly bare. Ellen hated rationing, but what else was there to do? Mike was right, what could he do? Go out there? Sure, only to never return. Baby in tow, she tromped over to the front windows and radiated hatred at the undead things in the street below, milling about as ever, even in the freezing rain. She threw open the sash and leaned out, sleet stinging her face. She shielded Emily, pressing the small head against her depleted bosom.

“Fuck you all!” Ellen shrieked. “Fuck each and every one of you goddamned parasitic motherfuckers!”

Emily started to cry.

“What are you doing?” Mike bleated as he hastened to the window, grabbing his wife’s arm. “You could drop her.”

“And what, Mike? What? She’d be taken days before her time? Maybe I’d be doing her a favor. Look at this fucking world we’ve got here. And look at this family. A balls- less dad and a worthless mom with sand in her tits. She’s gonna fucking starve, Mike. Starve. So will we, ultimately, but Emily’s got no reserves. She’s wasting away. And blue.”

“ ‘Balls-less’?” her husband peeped.

“That’s what you got from all that? Brilliant.”

Over the prickly clatter of sleet the zombies heard the commotion above and stared up at the scene of domestic turmoil, hunger being the only urge left to animate their lifeless eyes. Ellen looked away from Mike back at the throng. She could win this bunch over in a second if she’d just fling herself and the petite hors d’oeuvre in the organic-cotton sling down to them. The lunch crowd would go wild, then move on. She remembered how the world had gaped in stupefaction and revulsion as Michael Jackson dangled his infant son out a hotel window. The multitude below, with their caved-in faces and bleached skin, reminded her of Wacko Jacko, but she was the one dangling the baby.

She slumped against the wall beneath the window and joined Emily in tears. Mike closed the sash and crouched down to comfort his girls, but his touch and gentle tone brought none. They were disconsolate and he was, truth be told, balls-less. But who wouldn’t be? Was it balls-less or just common sense to not leave the building? How could he? Ellen and Emily’s wailing grew louder, amplified by Mike’s sense of worthlessness. He rose and left the room to get some water for Ellen, but by the time he reached the kitchen, forgot his reason for being there, opened the front door and stepped into the common hall, his own expression as absent as those normally worn by the zombies.

“Quite a racket they’re raising,” Abe said, gesturing into the door, which hung ajar.

“Huh?” Mike said, his thoughts muddled. He blinked and focused on his neighbors, Abe and Paolo, the good- looking South American from 2B. “Oh, yes. Rough day.”

“Aren’t they all?” Abe said, earning earnest nods from both younger men.

“Indeed,” Paolo added. “These are dark days.”

Feeling the need to talk to people who presumably wouldn’t scream at him, Mike joined in, though he wasn’t feeling very conversational. “They’re hungry, Ellen and the baby. Hungry and tired. And frustrated. Ellen wanted me to go out and get supplies, but that’s not going to happen.”